


All Things Considered

by thesearchforbluejello



Category: Whiskey Cavalier (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Some people just don't know how to have a constructive conversation amirite, an absurd amount of exposition regarding emotions, there's also an abundance of plot and everything is relevant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-07-24 00:15:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 43,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20017117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesearchforbluejello/pseuds/thesearchforbluejello
Summary: In which Standish fights for his life, Frankie makes a few contradictory decisions, Will tries to make sense of things, Ray tries to be supportive, Jai gives life advice, and Susan tries to keep everyone, including herself, focused on the task at hand.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey ho, here we go. We set our scene in fair Prague, where everything is about to fall apart.

He stalls, just for a moment, the length of a slow and measured breath. He lets his eyes linger on her lips before they flick up to meet hers again. She's still looking at him with that expression he can't quite parse, something complicated, something caught at the intersection of curiosity and desire. He doesn't think she's looked away from him. 

Hope is a dangerous, fickle thing. It's been leaching into Will for so long now that he doesn't know how to dam it up. He's been plugging the leaks it's springing from but the force of it holds the threat of drowning him and has since he met her.

Frankie has always been the one to look away, to move back, to tamp this out like an unwanted fire but now, here, she hasn't shifted away. She's still here and she's still looking at him like that. He finds himself caught motionless. Drowning.

He clenches his jaw and that little smirk she's had brushing at the corners of her mouth brightens into something he'd almost call a real smile. It's small and it's fragile and there's a challenge written there, but it's a smile. He's caught between one breath and the next because she's so, so close, but he's scared of putting that space back between them again. He's scared until she leans just that breath closer and presses her lips to his.

Frankie kissed him before, in France, when they were undercover and she'd done so solely with the intention of shutting him up with an added bonus of pissing him off.

This is nothing like that.

She's so much more gentle than he expected, just pressing her lips chastely to his, a moment that drags heavily into something too intense to be innocent.

Then she leans away. Her eyes meet his, her smile gone. She looks gobsmacked, almost, like she had in France when a situation she'd thought she had under control turned into something unexpected. There's a soft shock written in her expression. Underneath it Will can see that she doubts, not what she wants, but we he wants. He doesn't understand how she could possibly not know.

He'd let her take the first move out of necessity, knowing that she needed that control of her decision, but he wants her to understand so he takes the second move and dips his head to kiss her, soft pressure just for a moment before he parts her lips with his. She tips her head back and inhales through her nose as he takes her bottom lip between his own. The sound of that breath makes him somewhere dangerously near desperate in his want to touch her but he holds on to the last shred of self-control he has and doesn't. He needs to know her mind. He knows it's something not easily shared for her, but he needs to be absolutely sure that she's ready for this and that it's not his own hope that's playing him for a fool like it has so many times before.

Then Frankie’s pushing herself up on her toes with one hand on the back of his neck, the other across his shoulders, and she slips her tongue into his mouth.

Will forgets all about the pastry.

He pulls her closer and she comes willingly. She's gripping his jacket to keep him in place and she's pressed up against him and the feel of her body against his is going to drive him mad. He kisses her like it's a reunion, like it's a fulfillment, like it's a desperate goodbye, his fingers woven in her wind-tangled hair. She's sugar-sweet with the taste of the pastry on her lips and Will doesn't think he's ever known what it was like to drown like this.

They've been swimming parallel to the shore, fighting this riptide that's been pulling them down since they were locking each other in trunks and flirting with a bullet wound and a kitchen knife between them. There's no shore in sight now and he'd find that it's the last thing on his mind if he was thinking about it at all.

It does occur to him, however, that they're still standing in public when she drags her teeth over his lip and he makes a noise low in his throat that anyone an arm's length away can probably hear.

He breaks the kiss to see her face and she's looking at him the same way he knows he's looking at her. Her expression is raw with want. He presses another kiss to her lips, chaste but with a pressure he hopes can communicate how much he wants her, them, all of this. She closes her eyes for that slow moment and he thinks she understands. 

She slides her hand over his shoulder and down his arm until she can lace her fingers with his. He can read her so clearly in this moment as it stills around them, her wide-eyed earnestness, her head tilted ever so slightly to the side in that tell for honesty and openness that he knows she fights to hide sometimes. She's not hiding it now.

They move together like they'd agreed out loud, all thoughts of the view forgotten.

She doesn't say anything as they walk the block back to the hotel. She smiles at him, though, twice, and he smiles back. He doesn't speak, too afraid to disturb the silence that's settled between them like something sacred until he's closing the door to his room behind them and she's watching him like she's waiting.

"Are you sure this is what you want?" he asks. He can see it on her face, clear as sunlight, but asks anyway. 

"I want you," she says. She's still watching him with that expression and he knows that he really is what she wants.

"Positive?"

"Yeah," she says with a faint smile.

"Really, really sure?"

" _Yes_ ," she says with something like fond exasperation. She reaches out for him and he reaches out for her and they crash together again in that riptide.

There's something dangerous blooming in his chest, unfurling petals sharp edged and brittle and Will thinks he knows what it is. Thinks she might too.

Frankie breaks the kiss and he watches her face as she traces her fingers along his throat and pulls his scarf through itself to drop it unceremoniously on the floor. He knows how many ways she could kill him right now, this close together, his throat exposed, his whole self weak for her. It doesn't change a thing. Or maybe it does, if he's honest.

He kisses her cheek and then her jaw and then her throat and she gasps in a slow breath as he moves his lips right below the curve of her jaw. Her fingers had been working at the buttons of his coat but she pauses, gripping the fabric instead, holding his body flush against hers. He wants so badly to hear the sounds she'll make.

The thought of that distracts him and he draws a breath against her skin, causing her to shiver at the motion of the air over the wet spot his mouth has left on her throat. He traces his hands down her back.

She pushes his coat free of her shoulders and he does the same with hers. They fall to the floor in careless folds. He pulls her shirt over her head and lets it fall wherever it drops. He traces his hands over her skin, his thumbs over the hills and valleys of her ribs, the pads of his fingers over the crests and dips of her spine, memorizing her in topography as she unbuttons his shirt and shoves it off his shoulders. He laughs as it falls to his elbows before he shakes it over his wrists and onto the floor.

She glares at him a little as though she isn't sure if he's laughing at her or not. Will brushes his knuckles against her cheek and she looks him in the eye with something like fear building in the space between them before he crushes it by kissing her again. They're chest to chest and the lace edging of her bra drags delicately against the hair on his chest. His grip on her waist tightens in response and she gasps against his mouth, a sound with the barest bit of voice behind it. His fingertips are pressing into her skin something close to brutal but he wants her against him so badly that the thought is gone as quickly as it occurs to him. She doesn't seem to mind anyway. 

Frankie toes her shoes off and steps back from him just enough to get her hands on the button of his jeans. He puts his lips back to her neck and sucks a mark on her throat that he thinks will fade before morning but almost wishes wouldn't. He steps back close to her so her hands are trapped between them and she puts her palms flat against his abs to push him backwards again. She pushes his jeans over his hips and watches as he kicks them off. He releases the button on her own jeans with a stroke of his thumb. He slips his hands beneath the waistband of her jeans and underwear, hooking his thumbs over the fabric; she watches him as he draws his hands slowly over her hips, fingers splayed across her skin, bringing her jeans down slowly. Her lips tighten into a line and he knows she's getting impatient. Will grins as she makes eye contact before she puts her hands over his and shoves her pants down, kicking them off. He pops the clasp on her bra and she rolls her shoulders to let it drop.

He wants this to last, to remember every moment of her, but he wants her almost desperately. Desire is burning hot and fizzling bright in his veins, desire to be vulnerable with her in the way that only sex is. He knows she sees it differently and he knows she uses it as a tool, a tool for information or a tool for relief, and he's seen her faking lust. This is different. He can read the truth of it blown wide in her pupils as she looks up at him, lips parted, before he kisses her again.

She pushes him backward toward the bed and he pulls her up with him. She straddles him, settling over his abs. "You're beautiful," he says, looking up at her, his hands on her elbows as she presses her palms to the bed, holding herself above him. Frankie doesn't smile; she leans low so they're chest to chest and kisses him. She's nowhere near as gentle as she was before but he absolutely does not mind. When she pulls away she looks at him and he can tell that she's surprised herself. He doesn't know how to parse that.

He never thought they'd get here. He'd dismissed this as an impossibility when she had. He hadn't liked it, and had said as much because he'd thought it was a mistake for them to dismiss something as powerful and dangerous as what was already tugging them together even then, but he'd respected her point of view. He respects her enough as his partner and as an agent in her own right that he hadn't pressed her on it, and if he's honest with himself he'd also thought this would go away. He's fallen in and out of love before, or so he'd believed every time.

It never felt like this.

He's never felt this raw with need. The world has narrowed down to her alone. Her smile when he groans, the sound tearing free of his chest like something jagged. Her laugh, like a challenge, when he wraps an arm across her shoulders, digs a heel into the bed, and rolls them over so he's above her, kissing down her chest. Her gasp with the voiced edge of need as he puts his mouth and his tongue on the scar he gave her in France. The way she looks at him when she uses the grip of her legs around his waist to roll them over again and ruin him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm at 30k and not finished, so stay tuned. Updates every Wednesday, with the exception being this chapter today because tyrsenian is nice to me and I can't say no.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Wednesday. I've been working on this since the night of that damn finale and I can't believe I finally get to share it.

He cards his fingers through her hair again, untangling the strands. The hotel-cool air of the room is settling a chill over both of them now that they've caught their breath. Frankie has fitted herself against his side, her ankle hooked over his shin, her head on his shoulder, her arm thrown over him. He hadn't really expected this. Her eyes are closed and she looks as relaxed as he's ever seen her, a fact that makes him self-satisfied for more reasons than one. They've been silent long enough that he can't believe she hasn't left yet. If she had, that would've been its own problem. But the fact that she's still here tells him more than he thinks she ever could if she were attempting to string words together into the same meaning. He decides to push his luck.

"I never figured you for a post-orgasm cuddler," he says softly, into the silence.

"I'm not cuddling; I'm stealing your body heat," she grouses immediately, like she's just been waiting for him to speak. He definitely takes note of the fact that she doesn't look at him.

"I can't believe this," he says.

"Don't make it weird."

"No, really. I can't believe it."

"Will," she warns, still without looking at him, "don't get sappy."

"I actually managed to give you a cute scar. With a kitchen knife, too."

She looks up at him and when she sees him smiling to the ceiling she chuckles in surprise. "You're biased."

"Maybe." He can't wipe this smile off his face. He doesn't want to. He looks at her and finds that she's still looking up at him, like maybe she wasn't thinking of leaving at all.

He slips his fingers beneath hers where they're resting on his chest, gripping her hand and lacing their fingers. He pushes himself onto his elbow, turning her with him until he's above her and pressing the back of her hand into the mattress. She's looking at him with a challenge written all over her face. He smiles because they both know she'll end up on top again and she knows now just how much more than okay he is with that. He wants to bring back that dazed look she'd had earlier so he kisses her slowly, rolling off his hip so he's resting his weight on his elbows, propped above her so she's all but pinned to the bed by him. She's tangled in the sheet she'd wrapped herself in to ward off the chill but manages to hook a leg around his waist and pull him closer to her.

He kisses her slowly and after a long minute catches her wandering hand and pins it against the bed too because he's happy right now just to kiss her until she's languid and relaxed beneath him and he can work her up again. They have time, today, because nothing and no one needs saving.

When he traps her palm with his, though, she breaks the kiss suddenly and presses back against his weight on her hands. He lets her go immediately and leans away, but she's still got her leg around his waist and isn't giving him much leeway to give her space. He doesn't understand why she suddenly looks so unhappy.

He lets his confusion show on his face; he lets the words collect on his tongue and crushes them to the roof of his mouth to trap them there. He doesn't know how to say what he's thinking quickly enough for her not to run. He can see she's considering it because the unhappiness has blended its color with guilt.

He puts his hand on her thigh and she presses her heel into his back to pull him closer again. He kisses her, less gently, and she moves her hands over his back, digging her fingernails in as he draws the sheet away, across her body. He tosses it away with a careless flick of his wrist and gravity sends it slithering off the edge of the bed. Neither of them notice. 

Will speaks a handful of languages, most of them with passable fluidity at the very least. Right now he's trying to speak Frankie's.

He holds her tight to his chest as he rolls them over without warning. He releases his hold immediately and studies her face, trying to read the meanings she won't bundle into words. He maybe doesn't understand her language completely, but he's getting there. He thinks she's still figuring out his vocabulary. There's only so much he can translate for her without losing the meaning but he'll try until she learns it for herself.

She adjusts herself, straddling his abs, her hands on his chest, looking down at him. He puts his hands over hers. She studies him for a moment and he hopes she's understanding what he's trying to tell her. He's got a hundred thousand words to express his thoughts but that isn't what she wants or needs right now.

She smiles, just slightly, just a little wickedly and he knows that she's realized just how hard he's trying not to talk. 

His self-control cracks and he opens his mouth to snark at her but she kisses him before he can.

They might have different languages, but some things are mutually intelligible. Like how she makes him forget the words of any language he thought he knew.

**

She made it through half of Miracle before she fell asleep and Will knows it's jet lag finally catching up. He's pulled the duvet free of where it was tucked beneath the mattress, pulling it up and around them because he knows just how much she hates being cold, even lying beside him with hardly the space of a hand between them. He breathes softly, trying not to disturb her or this new, fragile, budding thing that he knows will shatter like glass if he holds it too tightly.

Frankie's phone buzzes on the nightstand beside him, just barely out of reach. She doesn't stir so he doesn't reach for it. It hums a pattern of disruption into the quiet room before falling silent.

And then again.

"Would you answer that," she grouses, not bothering to open her eyes. She shifts beside him though, stretching her legs, her foot tracing down his shin as she resettles.

"I was trying to let you sleep." He draws his fingertips down along her shoulder, over the soft fabric of the t-shirt she'd stolen from him after they'd showered.

"Not sleeping now," she says.

"It's your phone."

"Then hand it to me." He's already reaching for it.

"It's Susan," she says as she answers. He assumes she's warning him to be quiet. "Hey Susan--" she starts. She sits up immediately, her hand grabbing Will's arm, looking past him into the room with an expression that's lodged somewhere between alarm and dread. "He what." Will sits up too at the raw fear in her voice. "Yeah," she says, finally looking at him. "I'll tell him. We'll be right there."

She doesn't relax her grip on his arm. She ends the call and then stares at the screen.

"Standish was stabbed," she says.

"What?" Will says, like he's misheard her. He doesn't know what he was expecting, but it wasn't that. It never would have been that. 

"They don't know if he's going to make it," she says flatly.

Will has so, so many questions but "Oh my god" is the only thing that comes out. 

"Susan's booking us plane tickets. We need to get to the airport. They're going to meet us outside the lobby." She's still staring at him with that look frozen on her face and he finds himself caught in the moment with her until she takes a shallow breath. "You don't think--"

"I don't know," he interrupts. "Let's go."

She slips off the bed after him and if this were any other circumstance he'd let himself watch her move, let himself see the way his shirt falls loosely around her thighs, the way her hair dried wavy. 

This isn't any other circumstance and he's packing his bag with his back to her as she pulls off his shirt and puts her own clothes back on. She comes to stand beside him and he looks up from where he's bent over his suitcase. She's holding his shirt out to him. There's something dangerously like guilt on her face and when he accepts the shirt she slips out of his room to pack her own bag.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise this fic isn't all just sex. There's plot too. More plot than sex, I promise. This is just the set up.


	3. Chapter 3

Ray's in the passenger's seat when Will gets to the front of the hotel. 

He still looks pale and worn with his head rested back against the seat. "What are you doing out of the hospital?" Will snaps. It's not anger the colors his voice, though, it's concern. 

Ray sits up a little straighter at the sound of Will's voice. "Going to New York," he says, like it's obvious.

Will looks at Susan in the driver's seat but she rolls her eyes and shakes her head. They've obviously had this conversation already so Will just shakes his head in return as mute agreement.

He shoves his suitcase in the hatch and Frankie is suddenly beside him, doing the same. He looks to her as he reaches up to pull the door shut but she moves around the side of the truck without so much as a glance in his direction.

He knows they haven't had time to discuss what happened between them besides the initial rushed consent, but the sudden cold shoulder makes him nervous. It distracts him momentarily from the direness of the situation and he hates himself a little for that lapse. She distracts him. 

Will slides into the truck and Susan is pulling away from the curb before his door is even shut.

"What's his condition-- do we know what happened?" he's asking immediately, even though he dreads the answers. Frankie looks sick beside him, her lips pressed into a tight line.

"Not a clue," Ray says. There's exhaustion heavy like ballast in his voice, weighing it down. It's not the sound of hope. "He was brought in last night, New York time, and when they IDed him I got the call. When I spoke to Casey he said that as far as he knew, Standish was still in surgery."

"Did they call his mom?"

"I did," Susan says. "She should already be at the hospital by now."

"Did you call Jai?" Frankie asks, leaning forward.

"Yeah, I did," Ray says. 

Frankie relaxes against the seat again and resumes staring at the back of Susan's seat in front of her. There's tension wired in her shoulders and her hands are clasped tightly in her lap like the pressure of her palms against each other can hold all the pain between them and keep it cupped there, encapsulated and isolated.

Will watches her for a moment before her eyes shift, not moving in his direction but nevertheless betraying that she's noticed. He looks away, catching Susan's gaze in the rearview by accident. He makes eye contact just long enough to not seem like he's avoiding anything and then looks out the window.

The ride to the airport is frighteningly silent, heavy with a sodden, weighted dread that clings to all of them.

Will and Frankie don't look at each other. He wants to reach out to her, break that cage she's fashioned from her palms and tell her it's okay to feel that pain. He doesn't.

Susan parks the truck in a lot for someone else to retrieve later. They have an hour before the flight leaves when they pile out.

They make it to their gate just in time.

Someone worked some kind of black magic in getting them two pairs of seats together. Susan and Ray are closer to the front of the plane. Will settles in the middle seat of their row, further back, letting Frankie take the aisle rather than the seat next to the cranky-looking man at the window. She is, for all intents and purposes, as far as the airline and their passports are concerned, his wife for the next several hours. That's a whole lot more awkward than it ever has been before and Will tries to bury all the thoughts it's bringing popping up like whack-a-moles. There are words in both his vocabulary and Frankie's that sound the same but resonate with different meanings. This is one of them and sex isn't going to change that.

The plane sits on the tarmac, waiting for clearance to approach the runway.

He figures that Frankie probably looks to anyone else like she's nervous about the flight, lips pressed thin and shoulders stiff like she's afraid to fly. Will knows she doesn't sleep on flights but also has a pretty good guess that it's never the plane itself she's worried about. Today, though, he knows that's not it at all.

"You okay?" he asks softly under the hum of the engines.

The man in the window seat shoots him a dirty look for talking on such a late flight and adjusts himself so his cheek is on the other side of his neck pillow, away from Will, who ignores him.

"Fine," Frankie says.

"It's okay if you're not."

"I'm fine," she insists. He can tell by her tone that if he presses any further he's going to start a fight.

He reaches for his phone but finds it dark when he tries to wake it. He looks at Frankie. "My phone's dead."

"You must not've charged it this morning," is her almost flippant response.

He isn't sure if she's teasing him, flirting with him, both, or neither. "I was a little distracted," he says. She looks at him with that almost-smile again, the way she had in the city early this morning, with that complicated emotion that shows itself more in her eyes than on her lips. Then she looks away and it's gone and the weight of this all settles over Will again, heavy behind his eyes and on his chest. "Let me borrow yours." He holds his hand out.

"No."

"What, you want to sit in silence the whole flight?"

"You're going to kill the battery."

"It'll be fine."

She glares sidelong at him but pulls it from her pocket anyway. The engines pitch up as they move onto the runway. Will puts in a headphone and scrolls through her music, handing her the other.

"If you play anything that was in an animated movie, you're going to die on this flight and no one will ever know why." She says it so low that he almost doesn't hear it under the rumble of the engines as they finally begin their takeoff.

He grins. "Are you saying you have Disney music on here?"

"No, but there's inflight wifi and I don't trust you not to use my Spotify. And no Bonnie Tyler."

"Who doesn't like Bonnie Tyler?"

"I like Bonnie Tyler. I just don't like how much _you_ like Bonnie Tyler. "

He can't help himself. He smiles and when she looks up at his lack of reply, he can see the moment she reads everything on his face. Her eyes soften, just for a fraction of a moment before she looks away. He wants her to understand that he's in this for her, not just some good sex in a nice hotel. Some really, really good sex. Amazing, even. And in a very nice hotel. He just doesn't know how to help her see it like he does.

She leans her head back against the seat and watches the aisle half-heartedly as the inertia of the takeoff pushes them into the seats. He clicks on the Matchbox Twenty album that he absolutely, definitely, even under threat of torture won't admit he has on his phone too just because he knows she likes it, because if he did she'd probably break his hand.

He tries to get as comfortable as he can with his knees unavoidably pressed against the seat in front of him and closes his eyes.

**

Jai rushes into the hospital with absolutely no idea where he's going. The woman at the front desk gives him directions to the trauma ward; she's barely finished speaking before he's already headed down the hall. 

He presses the button for the elevator repeatedly, rolling his shoulders, listening to the hum of the mechanics, waiting.

There are signs, a small blessing considering he's struggling to untangle the directions. 

He pushes open the doors to the waiting room and there's no one at the desk, where he looks first, but a woman stands from the seats.

"You must be Jai," she says. He can't even nod before she's hugging him.

He pats her shoulder for lack of any other ideas. "You're his mother," Jai says, as if that fact isn't obvious by her reaction and solidified by her resemblance to Standish.

She nods. There's a tissue gripped in her hand, streaks of mascara caught beneath her eyelashes where she'd tried to wipe it away. She's younger than Jai had expected. 

"Eddie's told me so much about you," she says, releasing him but squeezing his hand. "You're his best friend."

"I-- yes--not on purpose. Is he okay? Have they told you anything?"

"He survived the surgery." She takes a measured breath and Jai wonders if she's cried as much as she can, if there's even just so much as someone can cry. "He's still critical. They don't know when we'll be able to see him."

Jai nods. Standish's mother sniffs and takes a deep, slow breath. She presses beneath her eye with the tissue and Jai doesn't know what to do. His hands are shaking. He feels... uncomfortable. One of his best friends is on the other side of that door, somewhere, fighting for his life. His other best friend is half a world away, on a plane with the rest of his family that he never wanted but really wishes was here right now. 

Standish's mother sits back in the chair she'd been in when he arrived. He pats her arm and settles beside her to wait, both of them watching the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gave me emotions. Bonus: Soundtrack: English Town by Matchbox Twenty because I'm talking about North. Also, who doesn't like Bonnie Tyler? If you say you don't then you've already been mathematically proven to be wrong.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus Sunday chapter because tyrsenian said she wouldn't mind one.

"He'll be okay," Ray says.

"You don't know that!" Susan insists, quietly so she doesn't disturb any of the other passengers around them.

"Of course I don't. But he survived Frankie when they first met, when she was, like, a hundred and fifty percent scarier than she is now. I think that makes him pretty tough."

Susan can't help but smile, even if it is only a little bit. "That's just because you're still scared of her."

"I'm pretty sure Will is the only one who isn't scared of her, but at this point I think I'm more scared of you than her."

"That's not exactly flattering," she says drily.

"We slept together for _weeks_ before you even admitted that you liked me. Way to hurt a guy."

"Most guys don't care."

"Yeah, well, I'm not most guys."

Susan looks at him for a moment. "Normally I'd say that using a phrase like that makes you exactly like most guys, but no, you're actually not."

"Thanks for making that sound like a compliment," he says sarcastically. 

"I don't know, Ray. I don't know. Let's just... I'm so glad that you're okay. I am. But I can't deal with this right now. When all of this is over, we can talk about it. Just... not right now."

"Okay," he says, because of course he'd agree if she asked. She knew he would and she hates herself a little bit for it. She knows this isn't something they should be dealing with right now, not when the situation with Standish is monumentally more important and hanging over their heads like an impending storm about to break, but Ray's acquiescence somehow makes her feel guilty even though she knows pushing this conversation away for now is the right choice.

Ray puts his arm around her and she rests her head on his shoulder as the plane descends.

**

"Will. Will." Frankie flicks him in the side of the head.

"Ow," he grumbles, putting his hand to the spot before she does it again.

"We're about to land." Frankie holds out the headphones she'd stolen from him after he fell asleep and he raises his head from her shoulder.

He's obviously groggy from the half-sleep he's been drifting in and out of for the past few hours. He blinks and then smiles at her like he's happy she's here. She waits a moment. She can see the instant he remembers where they're going because his smile dissolves into a grimace of something like dread. She knows she can do nothing to assuage that, so she reaches out and slides her fingers along the cup of his palm until she can lace her fingers with his. She tries to hide her alarm at her own action from showing on her face. 

Will presses his forehead to her temple and just squeezes her hand.

He leans away before the tires hit the tarmac and she appreciates that it's so he doesn't headbutt her by accident when the plane is jostled.

Frankie lets go of his hand to pull her bag free of the seat in front of her. When she sits back up, Will is looking at Susan and Ray, both of whom have turned in their seats to look back at them, checking in. Will doesn't smile.

**

Jai has been sitting in the waiting room for what must be hours now. He's not quite sure and that in itself is an indication that something is very wrong with him. He's still noticing things about this ugly room every time he looks up from the floor, which is why he has been staring at it for so long now. It’s easier to block out the extraneous details that way. 

Standish's mother has been kind enough not to speak much to him, leaving him to wrap himself in his headspace and shut everything else out. 

The tile is a gray-tinged white, washed too often and not often enough. He stares at it, at the confused sterility of it, and tries not to look at the chairs that are patterned like movie theater carpet and wholly overwhelming. 

The door opens and Jai lurches to his feet on numb legs as the missing four members of his team flood in. Will's the first through with Frankie right behind him; off her shoulder is Susan, pushing open the other door with Ray on her heels. 

"He's still critical," Jai blurts. The words tumble out before he's asked because it's easier that way. 

“Do we know what happened?” Will asks. Jai shakes his head. Will looks at Standish’s mother, standing beside Jai. “You must be Mrs. Standish,” he says.

“Farah,” she says, and Jai realizes that they’ve been sitting here for all these hours and he never thought to ask her name. “I’m not ‘mrs.’ anything," she says stiffly. It's not a stiffness directed at Will, but rather at the title itself. Jai notes for the first time that there’s a hint of an accent tracing its way around the edges of her words but he isn't quite sure what it is.

Will hugs her. She hugs him back. 

"I'm so glad Eddie has such a good family," Farah says. 

"We all love him," Will says as he releases her. "I'm Will. That's Frankie, Susan, and Ray." 

Farah nods. Jai appreciates that she doesn't say any empty platitudes about it being nice to meet them. Because it isn't. How could it be when Standish is dying a hallway away and there's nothing they can do to help him?

Jai is staring at the floor when Frankie steps up and hugs him. He's surprised but once he's processed it he hugs her back, because it's Frankie. The last time she hugged him was in Germany when all of this started and that was only because she hadn't seen him in six months beside when they were pretending not to know each other in a bar in Moscow the night prior. Both of them hate hugs but it makes him feel better, if only a little bit. There really is something wrong with him. 

Frankie looks like she hasn’t slept, but given that he knows she never sleeps on flights it’s probably an accurate assessment. There are dark shadows caught heavy beneath her eyes and her shoulders are tense, angled inwards like she's feeling defensive, but he can't imagine why. There's a bruise just faint on her throat, beneath her jaw, and he wonders how it got there. 

Will settles in the chair beside Farah. He looks tired too, but less ready to implode under the pressure than Frankie. His shirt is wrinkled, no doubt from the plane ride, and his hair is a little messy on one side.

Susan sits on Farah’s other side with Ray beside her. They’re sitting too close together on the bench seat and it makes Jai uncomfortable. His team has been a static force since it was conceived, small changes in increments shifting only slightly. This is change and he doesn’t like change. Frankie squeezes Jai’s shoulder and sits beside him, across from everyone else. Everyone who isn’t Standish. He isn’t here, talking, eating some kind of snack, leaving some kind of mess behind him to signify he was there. Jai is suddenly Batman without Robin. Still whole, but lonely.

Frankie is looking at him, sympathy written on her face, something rare for her to show so freely. Jai nods, because he may be Batman without Robin, but he has what Batman didn’t: family.

**

“I’m going to take this guy home,” Susan says into the drooping silence of the waiting room. She started reading the slump of Ray's shoulders a couple hours ago but knew he wouldn’t want to leave. Now, though, she can read his migraine in the furrow of his brow, the way he’s squinting beneath the lights, the defeated way he's sitting in the chair. She doesn’t want to leave their team but Ray isn’t allowed to drive himself yet. She also doesn’t trust him to stay away for long enough to get some real sleep.

Everyone looks up at her. Will is concerned, looking from her to Ray. Jai is stunned into apathy, still, hardly even sparing them a glance. He’s the one she’s most concerned about on their team. Frankie too, if a little less so, sitting beside him with her face utterly devoid of any emotion. She’s so easy to read most days when she’s not undercover that Susan worries about her outward apathy as well. It doesn’t seem to be shock, like Jai, but something a little deeper. More insidious, potentially.

Will is still focused on Farah, mostly, ready to offer support and comfort. Susan knows he gravitates like a force compelled by magnetism to anyone he thinks might need his help. Sometimes it gets him in trouble. Today, though, it’s an asset. 

"Come on," she says to Ray, pulling him gently his feet. He goes without protest and she knows it's acquiescence brought on by pain rather than his usual affability. "We'll be back in a few hours," she says to everyone else. "Just… call me if you need us." The words are lighter than their meaning, separating oddly at the seams like oil and water pulling themselves apart. 

"We will." 

She smiles at Will half-heartedly, sadly. 

They're in the hallway when Ray finally speaks. "We should stay."

"No. You need to rest."

"I should be here, with them," he insists. He looks over his shoulder, back at the door. Susan still has her hands around his arm and she feels the tension creep into his shoulders. 

"We'll be back soon."

"I know--" he starts and then squints in the hallway lights. The one above their head is humming thinly. "I know they don't always want me around. And I don't blame them. But they're my team; I should be here with them."

"Of course they're your team," Susan snaps. "You're part of this team too and I know you've had problems with all of us, even me, but they care about you and so do I. We're going back to my apartment, you're going to get some sleep, and we're going to come back when you feel better." 

Ray looks at her like he's somewhere between surprised and offended. 

"Sorry," Susan says. "I'm sorry." She presses a hand to her face as she tries to breathe back the tears. She fails and Ray folds her into a hug as she cries. 

"He'll be okay," Ray says. 

"Do you believe that?" Susan whispers. It's an honest question.

"Yeah, actually. All of this started because of him. Whiskey was sent to find him because he did something incredibly brave. Like, so stupid, but brave. He's tougher than we give him credit for."

Susan nods. Sometimes Ray is wiser than he lets on. "Okay," she says, wiping her hand across her eyes again. "Let's go."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have two more scenes to write of this 45k beast before it's done and I can move on to the next one... 👀


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Wednesday, folks.

Frankie is trying not to panic. 

A handful of minutes have passed since Farah was called through the door by a doctor, faceless and nameless beside his white coat. Sometimes, Frankie knows, the reaper wears white. She hopes this isn’t one of those times. 

It's an unfamiliar feeling to be so overwhelmed. Part of her wants to punch someone, part of her wants to cry, and the rest of her wants to just shut her eyes and pretend like none of this is happening. Her chest aches with the confluence of every conflicting emotion that’s building up into an anticipatory grief and making it hard to breathe. She’s always been one to assume the worst of a situation. It’s easier to prepare that way, and easier to avoid disappointment. 

She’s trying not to assume Standish will die. She’s so desperately trying not to think of him as already dead even though every learned pattern of thought is telling her to with the insistence that it’ll be easier that way. 

Will crosses the narrow aisle between the chairs to settle in the one just out of arm’s reach from her, unwinding the cord he’s pulled from his pocket and plugging in his phone. She watches him as he waits for it to turn on, staring at it with a furrow that’s taken up residence in his brow and belies his stress.

She’s trying not to have regrets but now that they’re back in New York it’s impossible to ignore everything that’s accumulated into the compound disaster that’s been the past few days. She hopes someone would have called Paul’s wife by now, at the very least. She doesn’t know why she cares. She’d met Iona at the wedding, of course, spent time with her as part of their gambit, but had hardly known her as anything but the bride with cold feet who Paul loved even when it jeopardized everything he’d sworn himself to. Frankie hopes someone has recovered Paul's body from wherever Ollerman's men had dumped it so it can be shipped home. Closure, at least, for his wife to know he’s really gone. Some small solace to know a truth about a spy who’d lied to her for so long.

Will puts his phone to his ear and Frankie looks over at him, wondering who he’d be calling at this time of night. 

A look of horror dawns over him and Frankie leans toward him. She’s still watching him when his face goes completely, utterly blank.

“Will,” she says. She doesn’t know if she says it in concern or in warning because she’s seen this look before and knows that this is how he wears his rage. 

He takes the phone away from his ear and says nothing to prepare them before he plays Standish’s message aloud. 

Frankie is hardly surprised to hear that Tina had killed Emma. She looks at Will, though, because she knows this is information that rubs harshly at scabs barely healed. His face is painfully, startlingly impassive.

When Ollerman speaks, Jai lurches from his seat like he’s been pulled. Frankie feels cold, suddenly, and numb, like she’s powerless to move, frozen in a moment of utter horror.

“We should’ve--we should’ve _known_ ,” Jai spits. “We should’ve _known_ it was him. How could we have let this _happen_?”

“They dna-tested the body,” Will says flatly.

“It was too mangled for you to get an ID,” Jai says, “you said so yourself. He faked it. He _faked_ it.” He punches the air and Frankie’s just relieved he didn’t punch anything with actual substance. “He had to’ve had someone on the inside. Someone faked that result. How could we have let this happen?!”

“It was the Reichenbach Fall,” Will says. Jai nods and is suddenly wearing that face Frankie knows means he’s scheming. Will looks at Frankie. “He set us up.” He looks back at Jai. “We need to know how he did it. Where he went after he attacked Standish. We need to know who his players are because he’s still playing this game with us that started when we exposed him in France.”

“I’ll go get my stuff,” Jai says with a nod. It’s ironic, almost, in a sense that’s really not ironic at all, that Jai seems calmer now, Iike a sudden flick of a switch has made him himself again.

“I’ll go with you,” Frankie says. It comes out softer than she meant it to, dampened and muted by the burgeoning guilt of knowing that she’s the one who let this happen to Standish. “We don’t know what his next move is.” Jai nods and she follows him out of the waiting room.

The hallway is cold and their footsteps loud on the tile.

“You should’ve killed him when you had the chance,” Jai says flatly. “None of this would have ever happened.”

“I know.”

**

The first thing Will does is call Susan. 

He knows she’s expecting bad news if he’s calling already, so as soon as she picks up he plows through with, “Ollerman’s alive; he’s the one who stabbed Standish.”

“ _What_?”

“Standish called me when we were still in Prague. The voicemail caught the attack. It was definitely Ollerman.”

She says something in Spanish that Will doesn’t know. The word for mother is in there, and maybe the word for cow, but he’s not really sure. One of the words he thinks is a verb, but that one he definitely doesn’t know.

“Will,” Susan says, “are you sure? Ollerman liked his mind games-- what if this is another one of them?”

“It was him, Susan. He attacked Standish because he killed Tina.”

“How would he have survived, though? You said he jumped from the window. He couldn’t have survived a fall like that.”

“He had to’ve. He must’ve had a plan.”

There’s a silence thick on the line before Susan says, “Will. I love Frankie as much as anyone, but… you said she shot out the window.”

“No, Suze--” he rubs a hand over his face. “She was trying to intimidate him. To threaten him into surrendering.”

“Where is she?”

“She went outside with Jai to get his stuff so we can start tracking Ollerman. I don’t think she wants to leave him alone right now.”

“Will, I hate myself for saying this, but are you absolutely positive, without any shadow of a doubt, that her shooting out the window was a coincidence?”

“No, I don’t think it was a coincidence at all. I think he manipulated her into it. Taking a threatening shot instead of killing him on the spot like she would’ve…”

“Before she met you,” Susan says.

“Lot of good my influence was. She should’ve killed him. He’s useful alive but we’ll never get anything out of him anyway.”

“I think you’re right. I was confident before, but we need to stop this.”

“Listen, are you guys safe? We’re all in danger before we know his next play.”

“We’re okay. Ray’s asleep; I’m armed. I don’t think he’ll strike now, though. Not so soon. He’s going to need time to regroup and plan. His major plan failed and all of the energy he put into this near-death escape had to have been done in advance. And the attack on Standish, if you’re right and it was about Tina, was about revenge. He probably didn’t plan it in advance. It was done in anger. Not Ollerman’s usual style.”

“So you think we have time.”

“Yeah, I do. But we should be prepared.”

“Okay.”

“Will,” Susan says, then pauses. “Ollerman focused on Standish because of Tina. But if he’s not dead, then I can’t help but think that maybe Ollerman didn’t want him dead. He’s still playing this game… and you’ve always been the objective.”

“I know.”

“Just… be careful.”

“We’re going to find him.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” He can almost hear her frown. “We’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Yeah. Frankie and Jai will be back in a second. We’ll start working.”

“Okay. I’ll let you know when we’re headed back.”

“Okay. Try to get some sleep.”

“I will,” she says. They both know this is going to be a long few days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot.™


	6. Chapter 6

Jai has hardly put his bag down in the chair before Farah opens the door. Everybody freezes.

“He’s doing better,” she says and they visibly relax. “The surgery was very successful, but we won’t really know until tomorrow if they think he’s going to continue improving. They said he got lucky; the knife could’ve been a half inch to the left and the ambulance would never have made it to him in time.” Her voice is weary. She doesn't sound happy, but Jai doesn't feel happy either despite the good news, so he thinks he understands. 

Will shifts his weight. Frankie looks at Will and Jai looks at Frankie looking at Will before he looks at Will himself. There’s something he’s trying to read in Will’s reaction that’s being confused by him trying to read something in Frankie’s reaction at the same time. It’s all very confusing. He’s either missing something or there’s still something wrong with him. His bet is on the latter.

“The doctor said that it might help if we talk to him,” Farah says.

“He won’t hear us,” Jai says before he can think about it.

“He might,” Farah says.

“We’ll hear ourselves,” Will says, looking at Jai and putting a hand on his shoulder. “That’s important too.”

“Fine,” Jai says. He doesn’t know why he agreed. 

Farah takes his arm and guides him down the hallway. His footsteps are loud. They pass a few nurses, maybe. He’s not really paying attention. 

Farah sits him down in a chair and he suddenly finds himself beside Standish. Even when he looks right at him he feels like he’s not seeing him, so he keeps his eyes fixed on the blankets. “What do I say?” he asks hoarsely.

“Tell him why he should stay,” Farah says, her voice hardly above a whisper.

Jai nods. Farah leaves the room and shuts the door behind her. The hiss and sigh of the machine that’s breathing for Standish is loud in Jai’s ears. He counts his own heartbeats between every rise and fall of Standish’s chest. It’s as close as he can get to looking at his face, at the tubes binding him here.

“I--” he starts and then pauses. “I’ve never had a friend like you. I-- I’ve had friends. Sort of. I mean, I had Frankie. But you know Frankie. She’s-- she never pushed me out of my comfort zone. We’re... alike.

“You and I are… not. You-- you’re sloppy, and irritating, and-- and-- and you drive me absolutely _nuts_. But,” he continues, “I told you once that I was ashamed to work with you. I was frustrated and irritated and you were the reason for both but I didn’t know you then. I mean, you are irritating. That’s not-- that’s just you. No offence. 

“You have to be okay,” he says. He studies Standish’s face for a moment before he stands and leaves.

**

Will settles into the chair. He worries about Frankie all alone in the waiting room after Jai stormed out, and he worries about Jai all alone wherever he just stormed out to. Will knows he’ll be back, though.

“When I said this team was a family, I meant it,” Will opens with. It’s hard to look at Standish, but he does. He’s looked death in the face enough to recognize life even when it’s a scarce and desperate hope. “I know we’re hard on you sometimes, but it’s to protect you. I think you know that. Your whole family is here for you, your mom and all the rest of us.” It’s frightening to see him so motionless. It leaves a bad taste in Will’s mouth to see him so still, not making faces behind Ray’s back, not lying through his teeth to Susan just to see if she’ll notice, not following Jai like an obnoxiously talkative shadow.

“I tried to make you understand that this-- that this is real. I wanted to prepare you, because this life is-- it's hard. I know you felt sometimes like we were treating you like a kid. The fact is that you got thrown right into the deep end, but you always handled things better than I could've asked." He pauses and thinks for a moment, most notably about when Standish had thrown up in the hallway at the university when Frankie had laid out the situation for him in all its painful reality. "Okay, well, maybe not 'always', but my point is that we were trying to protect you from certain things until you were ready. 

"I wish there was something we could've done to protect you from this. You finally got that nemesis you wanted, though, so I hope you'll get the chance to have a laugh over that." Will tries to smile. "Sometimes that's all you can do. Keep smiling, keep laughing, and find the things to hold on to. 

"We're all here for you. We just want you to get better, so you work on that and we'll take care of everything else."

He gives Standish's hand a squeeze. He knows they only have a small window to visit him for tonight so he heads back out to get Frankie.

**

Frankie sits in the uncomfortable chair and tries to look at him. She can only do so for a moment at a time before it becomes too much. “I don’t have a lot to say,” she says. “Just that I’m sorry. I--" She breathes, forcing even breaths. Voicing her own guilt seems too much like giving voice to prophesy, like if she says it aloud she'll have to live with it as a truth.

“The next time I see Ollerman I’m going to put a bullet in his head for what he did to you. So you need to stick around.”

That's all she can manage. She leaves the room, rushing down the hall back to the waiting room. She feels like she's suffocating, the hospital air too still, her own skin too tight. She opens the door and Will is waiting, alone. 

She can tell by the look on his face that he knows. Of course he knows. He can read her even when she doesn't want to be read and that makes him her most dangerous adversary.

"Frankie," he says softly. "It'll be okay."

"Is that what you think?" she spits. "That it'll be okay? He might die because of me!" Her voice breaks and she hates herself for it. She knows this is the life they live. She knows. This is why she said she'd never let herself care. Somehow, though, somehow she ended up here. She can't breathe through the pressure in her chest. 

"What do you need?" he whispers.

"What do I need?!" she cries. "I don't need _anything_."

He's looking at her with sympathy written all over his face. She hates him for it, suddenly, reactively looking for any outlet for her anger. He steps forward and hugs her, arms around her shoulders like he's just hugging her as a friend and nothing more. 

Nothing more. 

He has to be nothing more and she raises her arms to push him away but against her better judgement finds herself fisting her hands in his jacket, holding him to her. 

"It's okay," he says and that's all it takes. She sobs and chokes on it as she tries to hold it back. The fact that this is her fault sits hot and heavy in her chest, burning its way out. Will presses his palm to the side of her head, holding her cheek against his chest like he's afraid she'll pull away. She doesn't even think she can move. "It's okay," Will says again. He moves his hand slowly up and down her back like it's supposed to be a comfort. 

"It's not. It's not."

"You couldn't have known."

"He _played_ me!" She shoves at him but he only moves a half-step back, remaining in her space. She knows she's right, no matter what Will says. Ollerman had provoked her right from the start. He'd hit her pressure point immediately and deliberately in saying that Will had changed her. Will himself has never been her weakness, not really; despite how much she’s continuously roasted him for his sensitivity and picked at him for what she’d initially thought were his weaknesses in the field, she knows now he's more than capable of taking care of himself. His influence on her, though, is something she can't avoid. The way she reacts to him is a weakness, whether it's the way she lets her guard down around him, the way she watches out for him regardless of her own safety or the mission itself, or the way she trusts him with things she knows she shouldn't trust anyone with. 

She slept with him. She knows she shouldn't have, knew she shouldn't even at the time, but she wanted him so badly. Still does. All of him, too, even his bad jokes and propensity to cry at emotional movies. And not just once. Or, rather, three times. Well, three times for her, twice for him if she wants to really break it down. She just wants him. All the time. 

"He played all of us," Will says softly. She looks up and finds him looking back at her, all honesty in his green eyes. He might joke about it enough to grate on her nerves, but his eyes really are as green as he says. 

He strokes a thumb across her cheekbone, wiping away the single tear she couldn't hold back. There's pity there, in the furrow of his brow. She hates him for it. 

She pushes herself suddenly onto her toes and kisses him. He leans away like he's surprised, which only tips her further towards him. She swipes her tongue against the seal of his lips and he puts his hands on her shoulders, pushing her away so she's flat on her feet. 

That pity is still there. He licks his lower lip like he isn't thinking about it before dragging it beneath the top. He doesn't look away from her but it's not want on his face, just that same raw pity. 

She looks away and takes a step toward the door. "Frankie," he says. 

She uses her arm to block the hand he reaches out towards her. 

"I'm here, whatever you need," he says as she walks away. "Just not like this."

She lets the door shut behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will is such a good egg but he's also so complicated in such simple ways that he's actually pretty difficult to write.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost didn't have a chance to post because I'm about to see Rob Thomas in concert, but we got here early! So happy Whiskey Wednesday!

Will hopes she knows he isn't angry with her. He just wants her to want him for him, not as an outlet for whatever pent up anger and grief she's trying to bleed off. He wonders if it was the wrong choice. 

Jai straggles in eventually. "What happened?"

Will looks up. "Nothing."

"Frankie didn't look like it was nothing. Wouldn't tell me, though,” Jai says stiffly. Will wonders what exactly they’d said to each other.

"Just a disagreement," Will says. 

"Yeah." Jai looks nonplussed and Will also wonders how much of the situation he's guessed, knowing Frankie as well as he does. His face betrays nothing. 

"I called Casey," Will says. "He has a team clearing the Dead Drop right now. We'll be able to get in to use the equipment soon, hopefully by morning."

Jai nods. "Good, because there isn’t a lot I can do here." He shakes his head. "I have a program running facial recognition on security cameras, traffic cameras, atm cameras, every kind of camera in the city to find Ollerman." He pauses. "One of his programs, actually."

Will nods, knowing Jai means Standish. "We'll find him."

"I want him dead."

"Get in line," Frankie says, pushing the door open. 

"Nice of you to join us," Jai snarks.

Frankie just looks coldly at him. Will gets the distinct feeling he missed an argument. 

The door opens and Frankie takes a hurried step to the side, reaching behind her back for the pistol holstered there. Farah steps in. "I'm sorry," she says, reaching out and squeezing Frankie's arm. 

Frankie straightens her jacket like it was what she meant to do all along. 

"You should all go home," Farah says. 

"No, we want to be here with Standish," Will says. "We're here for him, and for you."

Farah smiles, but it's sadly. "I'll be okay here by myself tonight."

"We're not leaving," Frankie says. 

Farah puts a hand on her cheek. Frankie presses her lips together, betraying her discomfort at the touch. "If you're going to catch the man who did this, you need to rest." At their silence she lets her hand drop and looks between the three of them. "I don't know exactly what it is you do. I don't want to know, I don't think. But I know someone did this to Eddie and I know you'll be looking for him."

Will nods.

"You guys go," Jai says. "I'll stay."

"Jai--" Frankie starts.

"It's fine," he says. "I'm fine. We'll be okay here. Go get some sleep and I'll find something for you to do."

Frankie studies him for a long moment before she nods. "We'll come back in a few hours." Jai nods in return. 

When Will doesn't make a move to stand from his seat Jai looks at him. "Go."

"Call us if you need anything." 

Jai and Farah both nod. Will follows Frankie out the door, putting a hand on Farah's shoulder as he leaves. 

Frankie is silent on the ride through the city. 

"You can stay at my place," he says when they're almost there. It would hardly be the first time she’s stayed in his guest room. The dozenth, maybe. He’s lost count over the past few months. 

"Okay," she says, still looking out the window. 

She follows him silently up to his apartment, her suitcase rolling quietly beside her. Will flicks on the lights and finds his apartment exactly as he left it. It's an odd feeling, in discordance with how much has changed. 

Frankie stalls just inside the door. She looks unsure. 

"Sometimes I try to help and… just don't..." Will says. Frankie looks at him like she's surprised. "I don’t always understand what you’re asking. But I _am_ here for you. However you need me to be."

She doesn't look like she understands, so he steps forward and kisses her, slipping his hand behind her neck. She doesn't kiss him back until he works his other hand beneath the hem of her shirt and slides it up her back. That seems to make her understand what he's offering and she reaches her arms up across his shoulders. 

He kisses his way down her neck and she starts to pull away. “It’s okay,” he says. She looks up at him with something that if he didn’t know her better would think wasn’t guilt. It is, though. He’s sure of it. “It’s okay,” he says again, his lips against her throat.

She drags her nails against the base of his skull, making him shiver. She ducks her head to kiss him. He almost thinks she’s going to stop this until she pulls his shirt over his head and lets it drop to the floor of his living room. She pushes him backward toward his bedroom.

“Wait wait wait,” he says. She lets go of him like she’s been burned. “I forgot to lock the door.” He jogs the couple steps back across the floor and latches the deadbolt. She still hasn’t spoken when he jogs back over to her and resumes kissing her, one hand tangled in her hair. She smells like his shampoo.

She pushes him backwards again, firmer pressure this time. Will pushes her jacket off her shoulders and pulls her shirt over her head. The backs of his knees hit the bed and he almost falls onto it. Frankie takes a step back from him to unlace her boots. He unties his own shoes and smiles at her. She doesn’t smile back.

She pulls her sidearm from the holster at her back and steps further away from him to place it on the nightstand. When she comes around the bed again she stops an arm’s length from him, studying his face like she isn’t sure what he’s thinking. He unclasps her belt and unbuttons her jeans. He isn't really sure what she's reading in his face; he isn't even sure how he's feeling. 

He wants her, of course. Has for a long time now. He doesn't just want sex, though-- he wants her in his life. It’s hard most days now to even imagine that there was a time without her around every day. Proportionally speaking, it was the majority of his life up until she almost killed him in Moscow, but she’d changed things irrevocably. 

He isn't sure if this is a bad idea. In Prague he thought they’d have time to talk about the next step, about what they both wanted. She would have pushed back, he thinks, tried to avoid it, but he knows it only would’ve been reflexive and she would’ve come around. But then everything came crashing down and here they are.

He doesn’t want her to think this is meaningless. He wants her to understand that he’s doing this because she’s seeking comfort and he wants to be that for her even if this isn’t his idea of it at all. For once in his life, he doesn’t know how to say this.

He kneels and pulls her jeans down with him, tossing them aside as she steps out of them. He puts a hand on her hip to push her back so she’s leaning against the edge of the bed and wraps his fingers around her ankle, lifting her foot off the floor. He kisses up her calf, sliding his hand up as he goes. When he reaches her knee he turns his head to move his mouth along the inside of her thigh as he ducks his shoulder to hook her leg over it. 

She fists her hands in the sheets behind her before his mouth is even on her. She makes a voiced gasp of surprise that he doesn’t expect because he hadn’t thought there was really any subtlety at all in what he was about to do to her.

He learns her in every noise she makes, telling him what she likes without speaking. Her heel is digging into his back, into the muscle of his shoulder. 

Eventually she reaches down to grab his shoulders, pressuring him away. He looks up at her because he’s unsure of what she’s asking. She definitely hasn’t climaxed yet, but he’s so close to getting her there. She pulls him to his feet and reaches for his belt buckle.

“You don’t have to--”

“Stop talking,” she says, but it’s mild. “Please.”

“Only for you,” he jokes to take the edge off the fact that she actually just said ‘please’ without being under any threat of immediate death. He unclasps her bra and she drops it beside her.

She smiles a little and pulls the pistol free from his own holster, her fingers brushing along his back as she reaches for it. He pushes his jeans down and pulls them off while she sets his pistol on the other nightstand, on the side she knows he sleeps. He bends over to pull his jeans over his heels and wipes his mouth on the denim before tossing them in the general direction of his hamper. She’s paused with her hand on the bed, looking absently at his comforter like she’s lost herself in whatever thought it had sparked. He rounds the corner of the bed and she looks up. 

He slips an arm around her waist as he reaches with the other hand behind her to pull all the blankets to the very foot of the bed. He kisses her, crowding her backward towards the mattress as he reaches for the drawer of his nightstand and gropes around inside without turning his head to look.

She sits on the edge of the bed, hooking a leg around his waist and pulling him up with her. She tries to roll them over but Will uses his weight to resist the move. He struggles to rip the wrapper open and she retaliates when he’s occupied by wrapping her hand around him.

He draws a harsh breath. “If you keep doing that we’re not going to get anywhere,” he warns. 

She smiles, just barely, only noticeable in the corners of her mouth.

“You’re so _mean,_ ” he groans. 

“You say that like you don’t like it,” she says smugly. 

“Oh I do.”

Her smile fades a little when she realizes what she prompted until he groans again. She laughs a little and he kisses her because he knows she can still taste herself on his tongue and he wants to remind her that he wasn’t the one making embarrassingly pleased noises a few minutes ago.

“Okay, _stop_ ,” he laughs, grabbing her wrist to pull her hand away so he can finally get the condom on. 

He drops the wrapper off the side of the bed and she uses his compromised balance to try to roll them over again, her legs tight around his waist. He drops to his elbows, chest to chest with her so she can’t flip them. “No,” he says, low and quiet.

“You didn’t seem to mind in Prague,” she quips. There’s an edge to it he doesn’t like.

“Oh, I never mind,” he says, reaching back with one hand to adjust her legs around him. “I usually prefer it, just like you usually prefer being on top.” She grabs at his arms as he presses slowly into her. 

“And?” she challenges breathlessly. 

“I don’t want to feel used and I don’t want you to feel like you’re using me,” he says. Her lips tighten into a line. “I don’t want you to just take what you need and for me to get off in the process.” He starts moving and her legs tighten around him.

“It’s not any different,” she says. 

“You know exactly how it’s different.” 

She doesn’t reply, but she’s so breathless that he’s not sure she would’ve anyway. She sighs through her climax quickly and it surprises him because she’d had plenty of time to come down after he’d worked her up with his mouth. She turns her head to the side, away from him, and shuts her eyes as he eases her through it.

It definitely wasn’t as good for her as he’d planned it to be, and he isn’t sure if he can get her there again so soon, but he knows he can at least try. He puts his mouth to the spot on her throat that he’s learned drives her crazy; after a long minute of him kissing down her neck he moves back to it and she gasps, weaving her hand into his hair, so he settles into a more insistent rhythm.

He manages to hold onto it until she comes with a cry and he follows almost immediately as his self-control shatters. He tries not to pin her with his weight, but she’s still gripping his hips with her thighs and he can’t roll off of her. He pants against her throat and her nails are digging into his shoulders but he doesn’t mind.

Eventually he puts a hand on her thigh and she relaxes her hold on him, letting him pull away from her and roll onto his back. She reaches over and presses her fingers to his palm, gripping the back of his thumb with her own. He doesn’t really know what she’s trying to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Complicated.™


	8. Chapter 8

When Frankie wakes up she's forgotten where she is. The nightstand beside her is unfamiliar but the pistol is definitely hers. It wouldn't be the first time she's woken up somewhere after a bad night and not remembered where she was, but she feels fine. She feels good, even, if a bit groggy from waking from a deep sleep after not having enough rest for awhile beforehand. 

Then she remembers that she's in Will's apartment, in Will's bedroom, in Will's bed, and Will himself is very decidedly snuggled against her back with his arm slung around her waist. Across the city, in a cold room, Standish is struggling to survive.

She slams the door shut on the image of him and thinks instead about the absolutely mortifying problem at hand instead.

It’s a problem because it is absolutely not at all what she meant to happen. She'd planned to sleep in Will’s guest room when he'd offered to let her stay over, especially after he'd suddenly changed his mind. She'd meant to slip out after he'd dozed off, saving both of them the embarrassment of waking up together. She doesn't even know what to do with the fact that he changed his mind, not at all. She doesn't know what to do with him. 

She scoots toward the edge of the bed, trying to extricate herself from his grip, but his arm tightens around her and he sighs against her shoulders. 

She's trying so hard not to panic. The sheets still smell like sex and her hair still smells like his shampoo from when she'd showered in his hotel room in Prague and she's trying not to think about him sleeping peacefully behind her, despite the fact that they've shared a room plenty of times before and she's stayed at his apartment plenty of times before and they've even slept in the same bed with each other before but this is so, so much different and she was absolutely, entirely not ready for it. 

She knows she should've expected it, because Will is Will and she's never really been able to resist him, as much as she'd like to, and this was the natural progression after she slept with him not once but twice now. The natural progression for him, anyway. She really had planned to slip out. 

This was supposed to be a distraction but all it's done is made her feel worse. He'd told her that he didn't want to feel used or for her to feel like she was using him, but that's exactly what she's done. She'd just wanted to forget for a little while and he'd sure as hell helped with that, but now any of the relief she’d felt has corroded into guilt. 

She tries again to slip free of his grasp but he stirs behind her and draws a long breath as he wakes. She stills immediately and he pushes himself away from her. 

"Don't do that," he says. 

"What."

"Regret it."

She adjusts her head on the pillow, still on her side, facing away from him. If she had to guess, she'd say they've been away from the hospital maybe five hours, and they'd spent part of it definitely not sleeping. It's still dark outside aside from the weak light of the city stuttering in through the shade over the window. 

"We can't go to the hospital together," she says. 

"Okay." She half expected him to argue or to ask why, considering they started showing up together to places awhile ago and no one so much as batted an eye. Granted, she'd also started spending most of her free time with him and no one had blinked at that either. Except Susan. 

Susan had definitely seen this coming. 

Will presses a kiss to her shoulder. "I'm going to take a shower. I'll just be a minute; then it's all yours."

"Like you've ever taken a short shower," she quips. The banter is reflexive, protective. 

"Hey. We didn't exactly get long showers in Iraq. Makes me appreciate them more now." He pauses for just a second and she knows there was something else he bit back, probably a comment about showering with her. She's starting to learn how he flirts and that is so much more terrifying than learning how he kisses or how he likes to be touched or the sound he makes when he comes.

He slips out of the bed and a moment later she hears the shower start running. The bed is a lot colder without him and she pulls the sheets tighter around herself. 

**

Will didn’t think Frankie would be asleep when he finished what was, in fact, a mostly, fairly, pretty short shower, but she is. She’s still on her side with the sheets clutched to her chest. He figures it’s not doing her much good in the way of keeping warm because her back is exposed, the sheet pinned below her hip. She’s deeply asleep enough that her face is relaxed and she looks peaceful. He wants to slip back in the bed with her and work this out until they're both happy. 

“Frankie,” he says, and she jerks awake. “I’m headed out. Shower’s all yours.”

“Okay.”

“See you at the hospital.”

“Yeah,” she says, sitting up with the sheets still held against her chest. “I’ll be there soon.”

“Okay.” He fits his pistol in the holster at his back again and tries not to think about Frankie pulling it free yesterday and the way she’d looked at him. 

He thinks of Ollerman, of what he’s protecting, then arms himself better than he had yesterday. 

He casts one last look over his shoulder at her as he steps out into the living room. She's watching the floor, sheets still held around her, and he tries not to think about what it means that she's waiting until he leaves to uncover herself. She's never exactly been shy. 

**

Ray is confused. 

It's not a new feeling for him, which is why he generally tries not to think too hard about anything. This, though, is weird. 

They're not allowed to see Standish right now, so the team is camped out in the waiting room with Farah. Ray has a headache the size of east Texas that he's trying not to let show. He keeps catching Susan watching him, but she hasn't said anything about it yet so neither has he. He's pretty happy to know that she cares, at least, so maybe it's worth the pain. He smiles at her and she smiles back.

Will is sitting across from them, not smiling. Ray was pretty out of it when he and Susan had left yesterday, but even so it seems like something has shifted, weighing Will down even past the obvious stress of worrying about Standish. 

And speaking of Standish, Ray had finally convinced Jai to go get some rest an hour or so ago, so at least he can chalk that up as a win for today. It had only taken him two hours to do the actual convincing, which was less than he'd expected. Well, he should probably attribute the success not to "convincing" but rather to "annoying" Jai. Either way, success is success.

His phone pings and he pulls it from his pocket. "We're good to go," he says aloud to Susan and Will. "They just finished the sweep."

"You guys go," Susan says. "I can work from here." Ray nods because he knows someone has to stay with Farah. If Susan happens to be wrong and Ollerman really was intending to kill Standish right from the get-go, there's a high probability of him sending someone to finish what he started. Neither of the Standishes is safe here right now. 

Will nods too. He follows Ray out of the waiting room and down the hall, pulling his phone out of his pocket. Ray hears a number dialing and then, "I know, I'm on my way." Typical Frankie, who doesn't know how to say "hi" like a normal person. 

"Change of plans; meet us at The Dead Drop."

"Am I going to regret not having explosives on my person?"

"They finished the sweep so probably not, but I'm sure Jai's probably gotten ahold of your watch at some point anyway."

"Oh I'm sure. I'll probably beat you guys there. Don’t shoot me when you walk in."

"We’ll try our best not to."

Will hangs up and despite the fact that Ray could hear the entire conversation and nothing was explicitly off, he can't help but to feel that something is amiss. 

"So what's up with you?"

Will just looks at him. "What?"

"Something's, I don't know, off."

"Ray, think back to that sentence that you just said… and then tell me all the reasons it was a stupid thing to say."

Ray presses his lips together. "Okay, fine. You're right. I know none of us are good right now; I'd be worried if we were."

"You should be more worried about yourself. How are you feeling?" Ray is almost surprised to see the genuine concern on Will's face. But, then, it should hardly be unexpected, given that it's Will. 

"Oh. I'm good." He shrugs. "I'm like a weeble. I wobble but I don't fall down." 

"I don't really know what that means, but okay. I'm glad you're alright."

Ray beams. "Thanks man. And, uh, thanks, you know, for everything. I wouldn't, uh, I wouldn't be here without you. And everyone else. So, thank you."

Will actually looks a little surprised. "Of course. That's what team's for." He claps Ray on the shoulder and steps into the elevator. Ray didn't think he could smile any brighter. 

It fades a little as the doors close and they're left in the small space, tinny music bouncing oddly off the metal walls. "I know this isn't a good time to say it, with everything that's going on, but I'm sorry that Susan and I didn't tell you."

Will shakes his head. "You're right; this isn't a good time to talk about this."

"I wanted to tell you, but I knew it had to come from her, and she wasn't ready for anyone to know. She wasn't even ready to tell me she liked me until I almost _died_ , which I realize is--"

"Ray," Will interrupts, "I really don't want to talk about this right now. If you-- if you need someone to vent to, later, then, I mean, fine, if you really need to, but not right now."

"Okey-dokey." It's really not that okey-dokey though, because he's been suffocating under this without someone to talk to; even now that Susan has admitted that she does, in fact, have feelings for him, he's still feeling kind of alone. He casts a sidelong look at Will. There's definitely something wrong and he knows it because Will's doing that thing with his jaw that he does when he's stressed or upset. Not just my-friend-is-possibly-dying upset, though, because there’s also an I'm-getting-emotional-and-haven't-let-it-out-yet upset there too. That's what's confusing Ray because he isn't really sure what to make of it.

The elevator doors open after a painfully awkward silence and Ray holds out the keys to the SUV. Will takes them, looking at them in confusion. 

"Can't drive yet," Ray says. "Brain magnets." He points to his head.

"Right."

Will is unusually silent as they drive to the bar. Ray doesn't like it. Not only is it not typical of Will to be so stiffly silent, but Ray was really hoping for some idle chatter to keep his mind off of Standish. 

When they open the door to the bar, though, Ray is kind of glad Will stays silent. There's blood on the floor where Paul had died, glass disturbed where Ollerman’s men had dragged him from the bar. There’s glass everywhere, really, and the whole bar reeks of alcohol so strongly that Ray can’t even smell the blood. There’s plastic taped over the shattered windows and the sunlight is diffused into something hazy and somber, aided by the raw illumination from the surviving ceiling lights. Frankie’s standing by the bar. She toes some of the glass and looks up at them for a moment before she does it again.

“Did they find Paul’s body?” she asks.

Ray just blinks at her. Beside him, Will does the same. “Um… I, uh, I don’t know," Ray says. She looks expressionlessly at him. “I’ll find out.” She just nods.

“I didn’t know you and Paul were close,” Will says hesitantly.

“We weren’t,” Frankie says flatly. “I didn’t even like him.”

Will squints at her in confusion and she turns away, crossing the room towards the supply closet and starting to rummage through it. Will clenches his jaw again. Ray frowns. As Jai had once said, “complicated.”

Frankie pulls a rag from the closet and starts wiping the glass off the bar. Will takes a few steps forward, the glass crunching underfoot. Ray inspects the damage to the walls.

“This is going to take so _much_ plaster to fix,” he says.

“I think we’d be better off just replacing all the drywall,” Will says.

Ray shrugs. “At least we could get rid of the wallpaper, then.”

“Nah, that would ruin its charm,” Will says with a nostalgic smile, brushing at some of the peeling wallpaper around a bullethole with his fingers. 

Frankie snorts behind them.

Will looks over his shoulder at her with his eyebrows raised. “I’m sure we can find some sort of vintage-style wallpaper.”

“Yay,” she says joylessly.

“I do like this color,” Ray agrees.

“Kiss-ass,” Frankie mutters.

Ray looks earnestly at Will. “I do.”

Frankie gasps. “Fuck.”

They both look back at her; she’s pressing the rag to her hand where a shard of glass cut her. “Karma!” Ray crows. Frankie shoots him a dark look and the enthusiasm drains from his face immediately. He’s already had one brush with death this calendar week; he doesn't need another. “I’m gonna just go get the... stuff,” he says quickly, heading for Jai’s batcave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As the show progressed, I really grew to love Ray despite all his faults and mistakes, and I think that really speaks to how incredibly well-written this show is. He'll definitely get his fair share of development here.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Wednesday!

Jai walks in to Will standing very close to Frankie, decidedly in her personal space. She’s glaring up at him but Jai knows her well enough to know that it’s not true anger. Definitely true irritation, though.

“Just hand me the bandaid,” she says dangerously. Will holds it out and she snatches it.

“Stop flirting so we can get to work,” Jai says. Will takes a rushed step back and Jai notices the tendons in Frankie’s neck tighten, betraying the fact that she hadn’t noticed him come in. She turns her glare on him and this time it is true anger.

She’s still mad, then.

He should probably apologize, but he doesn’t want to do it with Will standing here. He elects to wait instead. Also, it's easier to just avoid the conversation. He doesn't think it'll go well.

Ray appears suddenly from the back with Standish’s laptop, the external hard drive, and the extra tablet. He hands the tablet to Will and sets the laptop and hard drive on the part of the bar Frankie was apparently clearing off when he walked in. 

“He’s got that-- that--” Ray points repeatedly at the laptop, “program on here… that he uses to do that satellite thing. The satellite tracky thing?” Jai looks at him. “I don’t know, man, whatever he does, and he uses the hard drive so I brought that too.”

“That’s--” Jai pauses and reconsiders. “Thanks, Ray.”

Ray grins. 

“Give that to me,” Frankie says, holding her hand out for the tablet Will’s holding.

“No. Why?” he says. 

“Because you’re old and you suck at technology.”

“Who fixed your phone last week.”

“You didn’t fix my phone; you looked at it, pressed the home button, and it coincidentally unfroze.”

“Says you.”

“ _God_ ,” Jai says. “Just… _stop_.” Everybody freezes. “Are _none of you_ aware that one of our teammates is in the hospital, fighting for his _life_ because of Ollerman?” he spits.

Everyone is silent.

Frankie’s face is utterly blank. Ray looks like a kicked dog. Will’s the one to speak. “Jai, none of us have forgotten. If we… if we seem like we’re ignoring the gravity of the situation… it’s just because we’re trying to cope,” he says. Frankie looks up at Will and then back at Jai again.

Jai thumps a fist on the bar. “I know. I know. I _know_.”

“It’s okay to be upset,” Will says. Jai nods. “It’s-- I mean-- it’s okay to take it out on us without meaning to. You can’t just bottle it up, right? But just try to understand that we’re not all going to react to this the same way. We all love Standish.” He swallows. “We’re going to find Ollerman.”

“And we’re going to kill him,” Frankie adds flatly.

Jai nods. “Yes. We-- yes.”

Will claps a hand on the bar. “So. Let’s get to work.”

**

“Okay.” Susan puts her palms on the bar. “Okay, okay, okay.” She sighs. “Let’s recap.”

Frankie groans and rests her forehead on her crossed arms over the bar.

“I know. But we need to get somewhere with this,” she says. “If that means recapping five times, then okay.”

“I know,” Frankie agrees. Jai hands her a mug of coffee and she accepts it gratefully. There’s a tension between them that Susan has been noticing for the past few hours but it seems to have settled into something calmer while they’ve all been working. She thinks it’s finally at a point where they’ll be able to talk it out without fighting now. Much, anyway.

Frankie and Will, on the other hand, she’s had to keep separated all day. They’d been at each other’s throats every time she turned around, so she set Frankie on her own task and worked with Will herself. She’d really thought that after everything over the past few days the two of them would’ve come to some kind of acknowledgement in Prague, before this whole thing with Standish. She knows Frankie would rather be shot repeatedly than ever talk about her feelings, but if anyone could get her to talk it out, it would be Will.

“Okay,” Will says. “Jai.”

Jai frowns at him. “An atm cam picked up a man looking suspiciously like Ollerman a block from where Standish was found.” He holds up a hand. “ _Looking_ like. The same man was captured on a traffic cam two blocks from there. And then he’s just gone.”

“If it was Ollerman, then he has to have gone to ground somewhere in the city. He can’t have gotten out of the country on a commercial flight; he’s on every no fly list imaginable,” Susan says. 

“And no private flights have left with a passenger matching Ollerman’s description,” Will says.

“Any reports of private flights are notoriously unreliable,” Frankie cuts in. “He could’ve bribed any number of people at private airports to look the other way.”

“That’s true,” Will agrees. “But we can hope he’s in the city until we have evidence otherwise.”

“Hope,” Frankie snorts. “Hope will get us real far.”

Will looks at her with an impassivity that makes Susan worry what he's about to say. “I think you could do with a little hope.”

Frankie’s face goes blank but Susan can read the anger in the set of her brow and the fear in the tightness of her lips. That’s when she realizes what’s actually going on. She covers her mouth as discreetly as possible and looks away to hide her shock. Airing dirty laundry right now won’t help anything, no matter how much self-control she has to exert to stay quiet. 

“Will has a point,” she says when she’s wiped away her surprise. “We have to assume Ollerman is still in the city as long as evidence is suggesting it. If he’s still in the country, then I think he’d stay in New York. If he’s trying to lie low, he’s not going to risk getting caught fleeing the city. Plus there’s a ton of private airports around here or just outside the state, so when he makes a move he’ll go to one of those.”

“We need to find him before then,” Jai says.

“Agreed,” Will says. “We can’t let him get away this time.”

“He has limited resources,” Frankie points out. “The Trust is collapsing under its own weight; that’s why Ollerman was so desperate to make us pull off his plan in Prague. If we can find him here and take him out of play, the whole organization is done for.”

“Ray’s working on getting Casey to issue a kill order on him,” Will says.

Frankie shakes her head. “I don't care.” Will looks at her. “I’m not making the same mistake twice.”

Will’s jaw clenches and Susan doesn’t think Frankie meant anything more by that statement than what it was at face value, but it clearly hit a sore spot for him. Susan thinks it all through for a moment, trying to parse it out. 

“We’ve been monitoring every one of Ollerman’s known associates,” Jai says, “but there’s no indication of unusual activity.”

“Because there’s too many unknown associates,” Will says. 

Jai nods.

“So what now?” Frankie says, and Susan can hear the aggression edging around her tone.

“We wait until we have something to go on,” Will says.

“There’s no other option,” Jai agrees stiffly. Susan can tell how badly he wants to be doing something, anything, to help his friend. It doesn’t take a doctorate to see it.

“We should start shaking down the players we do know about,” Frankie says. “Somebody has to know something.”

“We can’t. They’d tip Ollerman off the first chance they got,” Will says with a shake of his head.

“There you go; they’ll lead us straight to him.”

“It’s too risky.”

“Every minute we waste here waiting is another minute that Ollerman has to plan,” Frankie spits.

Will puts his hands on the bar. “We can’t just run in without a plan and throw whatever we’ve got at him! I know you like to jump into things without thinking about the consequences, but if we do things your way we’ll lose Ollerman, maybe for good.”

Susan doesn’t even need an intro to psych course to identify the betrayal stamped on Frankie's face. Susan winces inwardly because Will may be the most genuinely thoughtful person she knows but he also has a tendency to let his pettiness run unchecked. Frankie presses her lips together and says nothing. Susan’s glad for that because Frankie’s anger burns bright and hot and whatever she might want to say to Will right now could take them both weeks to move past.

Susan’s phone rings and she picks it up off the bar.

“Hey, Ray.” Everyone looks at her with varying degrees of dread, expecting news from the hospital, where Ray has been with Farah for the past few hours. “Okay,” she says, and pulls the phone away from her ear. “You’re on speaker.”

“Hey guys,” Ray says. Will looks at Susan at the lack of any of Ray’s signature opening lines. She presses her lips together and looks at the phone in her hand. Rationally, she knows Ray is fine, but still recovering. She can't help her worry, though, so she shoves it into a box, cramming it in until it folds up with the box stuffed full, and slams the lid. “Casey just called; I’m sending you some information now. One of Ollerman’s goons called in sick to work today. I’m thinking you guys could maybe find him and see what he’s up to.”

“I’ve got the file,” Jai says. “Jim Pelletier. Financier, former ties with the Perretti crime syndicate here in New York--”

“Former ties?” Frankie says. “Bullshit.”

“NYPD informants say former,” Jai says. “I don’t believe it for a second either.”

“So what would Ollerman want with a not-former bookie for a small-time New York mob? Obviously there’s an angle here,” Will says.

Susan nods. “What’s Pelletier’s connection to Ollerman?”

“He handled some of his family’s accounts when Ollerman was still at the FBI,” Ray says. “Official stuff, all checks out. But it makes you wonder what he was doing for him under the table.”

“For a guy who was too sick to go to work, he looks awfully fine leaving his apartment a couple hours ago,” Jai says. “I’m in the security feed of his building. Doesn’t look like he’s come back yet.”

“Frankie and I will go check out Pelletier’s apartment,” Will says. He looks at Jai and Susan. “You guys dig up anything else you can find on the Perretti family and how they might be connected to Ollerman.”

Susan nods. “Make sure you stay on coms. No radio silence.”

Will nods, seeming to understand that she means that this is no time for them to be hashing out whatever it is exactly that’s got them both so hung up. Realistically she knows it was never going to be smooth sailing even once they finally slept together but she didn’t really expect it to be this messy. Granted, she also didn’t expect Standish to be stabbed or for them to be trying to hunt Ollerman down again, so really things are all around more complicated than any of them could have foreseen. 

The door closes behind Frankie and Will and Jai shakes his head. “Complicated,” he says under his breath.

“You’ve got that right,” Susan agrees.

“What’s complicated?” Ray asks.


	10. Chapter 10

“Wow,” Frankie says. “This guy is potentially the whitest white guy ever.”

Will nods in agreement. There are autographs from famous golfers framed on the walls, a single armchair in front of an absurdly large flatscreen tv. 

Frankie opens the fridge and holds up a Bud Lite. “White guy _beer_ ,” she says disapprovingly.

“Okay, okay, get out of his fridge.”

“Hypocrite,” she mutters. 

“What?”

“You didn’t have any qualms about raiding the fridge of the cabin in Spain,” she grouses.

“That was different.”

“I wasn’t going to drink his beer,” she protests drily.

“Would you guys _focus_ ,” Jai bites out though the coms.

Frankie shoves the fridge door shut and the beer cans rattle. Will watches her move through the apartment for a moment. He can see the tension wound through her, in her shoulders, in her neck, in the tightness of her lips. It’s driving him crazy. She hadn’t said a word on the way over and the stress of them being at odds with each other is crawling over his skin like a coagulating sense of dread that everything they’ve started to build is going to disintegrate before it can actually become something.

Oddly enough, it’s the best distraction he’s had since this whole mess began. 

“There has to be something here,” Frankie growls as they keep searching.

“Maybe he’s careful,” Will suggests.

“No one is that careful.”

Will lowers himself so he’s laying flat on the floor, looking under the couch. “Nothing but dust bunnies. He could use to vacuum under here.”

Frankie snorts. “You look like you’re about to do the worm.”

“I can, in fact, do the worm. I wasn’t joking about my mad dancing skills.”

“Yeah,” she snorts. “Okay. Dork.” She sits down at Pelletier's laptop and opens the screen. “Jai, his laptop is password protected.”

“Just plug in the drive. It’ll download everything and I’ll break the encryption on it later,” Jai says.

Frankie plugs the drive in. “Should I be seeing something to know it’s working?”

“I don’t know; I didn’t design it.”

“Oh good.”

“Just leave it plugged in and keep searching the apartment.”

Will pushes himself up off the floor to see Frankie shove the chair back with a huff. She and Jai have been at odds since the hospital last night and it seems like not much has changed. 

“I’ll check the bedroom,” Will says. 

“You check the bathroom; I’ll check his bedroom,” Frankie says, cutting him off as he steps toward the bedroom.

Will just rolls his eyes.

The bathroom is nice, like the rest of the apartment, but there are water stains in the toilet, left with the seat up, and toothpaste spots on the mirror. “This guy is definitely a bachelor,” Will calls. 

“Yeah,” Frankie says, muffled from the bedroom, “the only person he’s getting off is himself. I thought only teenagers used socks.”

“Ew,” Will says, echoed by an “eugh,” from Susan over the coms. 

Will opens the medicine cabinet. There’s not much in it except razorblades, a fresh tube of toothpaste, an unopened box of condoms, and a few bottles of prescription drugs. Will reads the labels. 

“Hey Suze, I’m texting you a photo of prescription labels from the stuff in Pelletier’s cabinet. I don’t even know how to pronounce some of these.” He sends her the photo.

“Two of them are for treating high blood pressure and high cholesterol; the other is for stomach ulcers,” Susan says.

“What would be a better cause for having a stomach ulcer than working for one of New York’s failing crime syndicates?” Frankie asks, coming into the doorway behind Will.

“Pretty stressful job,” Will agrees. “None of this explains why he didn’t show up to work this morning, though.”

“There’s nothing else here. Jai, can you track him through the city?” Frankie asks.

“Already working on it,” is Jai’s distracted reply.

“Frankie,” Susan says, “what was in the fridge?”

Frankie raises an eyebrow. “Not much. A lot of shitty beer, a carton of milk past its expiration date, some sticky stuff smeared on the top shelf, a bottle of mustard in the door.”

“What’s in his trash?” Susan asks.

“I’m a spy, not a cop,” Frankie huffs, “I don’t want to look in his trash.” She takes the lid off. “Beer cans. A couple paper towels. A twinkie wrapper. Mostly beer cans.”

“He doesn’t even recycle,” Will says disapprovingly. Frankie smiles at him and then looks like she thinks better of it, the smile disappearing.

“So he’s eating dinner somewhere else,” Susan says. Frankie puts the lid back on the trash. “Breakfast and lunch, fine. But even if he was getting takeout for dinner, there would be boxes in the trash.”

“I didn’t find takeout menus either,” Frankie says.

“So our friend Jim really is still moonlighting for the Perrettis,” Will says. “Explains why the apartment looks like he’s never here.”

“All of the surveillance chips you planted are reading loud and clear,” Jai says.

“You can call them bugs, Jai,” Frankie says.

“‘Bugs’ sounds so… unsophisticated. These are much cooler.”

Frankie just rolls her eyes.

“We’ll head back,” Will says. Frankie nods, pulling the drive free of Pelletier's laptop and closing the screen before following him out of the apartment.

**

Frankie hands Jai the drive as soon as they’re back in The Dead Drop. “Thank you,” is all he says, stiff and distracted.

Will joins Susan where she has printouts of the NYPD files on the Perretti family spread out over the pool table. Frankie watches him go before leaning a hip on the barstool next to Jai and waiting for him to look up. It takes an irritatingly long moment.

“What,” he finally says. She waits a beat longer. “If you’re waiting for me to apologize, you’ll have to wait longer.”

“I don’t want you to apologize. I want you to say that I have nothing to apologize for.”

“You don’t think you should apologize for the fact that you and Will missed Standish’s call because you were too busy getting in each other’s pants?” he snaps.

“What could we have done?” she throws back. 

“Found him faster.”

“He--”

Jai cuts her off. “A passerby found him. He was _lucky_. His team should’ve been there for him. Not distracted.”

Frankie glares at him. He’d confronted her at the hospital, after she’d kissed Will and then fled when he turned her down. Jai had dropped his revelation without explanation, only telling her in response to her dumbstruck expression that he'd smelled Will's fucking lemon verbena soap on her when she'd hugged him. She'd tried to lie that she'd stayed in the guest room, but then Jai had added insult to injury and told her that Will had left a hickey on her neck that she clearly hadn't noticed, because she hadn't even made an effort to cover it up. Jai has never managed to have very good timing. She knows that he was, and still is, looking for an outlet for his anger, but she knows he’s not wrong, however much she might want to argue against him just to prevent admitting defeat. 

“If you want to be angry with me,” she says lowly, all of the anger compressed to a simmer, “then go ahead and blame me for letting Ollerman live. I should’ve killed him. That mistake is on me. If Standish dies, his death is on me.” She puts a hand very calmly on the surface of the bar. “Letting Ollerman live isn‘t a mistake I’ll make again.”

“And Will?”

The varnished top is cool against her palm, except through the bandaid she’d fought with Will about earlier. She can’t feel anything through that.

“Frankie, I want you to be happy. But this team-- in this family, there are certain... load bearing points. Susan and Ray are one thing. They aren’t load bearing points. They can function just the same as they did before even with a changed dynamic in their relationship. I mean, it’s-- it’s weird, though, right?”

“God, so weird,” Frankie agrees.

“So weird,” he echoes. “But,” he says. “You and Will are the two biggest load bearing points. You’re the lynchpins. If you change, all of this fails.”

Frankie nods. 

“I want you to be happy,” Jai says. “I’ll be happy for you, no matter what. But this cannot work.”

Frankie nods again and swallows hard. “I know,” she whispers, forcing the words out past the phantom hand that’s wrapped around her throat, choking her.

“My job is and always has been to protect you. So I’m reminding you that you need to protect yourself. I know you love him, but you can’t.”

“I don’t love him,” she mumbles and tries to breathe. It would've been much easier if Jai had just vented his anger on her rather than voicing every one of the fears she’s already been letting fester. 

“It’s your decision. You have to make that choice for yourself. I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know.”

She realizes that she must look more distraught than she thought because he slips off the stool to hug her and she hugs him back. 

“It’s not us against the world anymore. There are consequences for everything.”

“I know that,” she spits.

Jai sits back on his barstool, going back to work without another word. He’s been trying to pick a fight all day, but suddenly, when she wants to fight because it’s easier, he’s calm.

**

“So,” Susan says.

Will looks at her. “Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“When you lead into something like that it means you’re not mad enough to just… charge in, but you’re still trying to prepare me for what you’re about to say.”

Susan smiles. “Taught you a few tricks,” she says.

Will smiles and shrugs. “A few. I listen.”

“I know you do.” Her smile disappears and Will feels the amiable atmosphere between them dissolve into something sober. “You and Frankie slept together.”

Will freezes. “What?” He scoffs. “No. No we didn’t.”

Susan raises an eyebrow. “For a spy, you’re a terrible liar.”

“Ugh-- I know. I’m a terrible liar.” He looks at the ceiling in frustration with himself.

“And?”

He looks at her in confusion. “And what? You know I won’t give you details.”

“Ew. No. I don’t want _details_. It’s like my siblings sleeping together.” She shudders.

“Eugh,” Will says, grimacing.

“Yeah. Ew. I want to know how you’re feeling about it.”

“What do you mean?” he asks, turning back to the files. 

“You know exactly what I mean. The two of you are super complicated and it worries me. I just want to make sure you’re both starting this in a way that’s healthy, especially given the circumstances.”

“What, like you and Ray did?” he mutters. 

“Exactly like we _didn’t_ ,” she says, not rising to the bait. “And you need to get a handle on that pettiness. I can take it, but Frankie can’t. She’s tough as nails, but she’s a lot more sensitive than she lets on.”

“I know.”

“You’ll hurt her like that. Badly. And she'll hurt you right back, reactively.”

“I know.” He frowns. “I never mean to be petty.”

“I know you don’t. Just watch out for it. Look, Will, you and I can talk this whole thing about Ray out later after all of this is over. I’ll apologize profusely and you’ll be mad and we’ll get over it, I hope.”

“Of course we will,” he agrees.

Susan nods. “But right now I need to know that you and Frankie are okay. You’ve been at each other’s throats all day.”

“Ugh, I know. Every time I try to talk to her, she just snaps at me.”

“Are you being mushy?” Susan asks sympathetically.

“No! I’m being deliberately not mushy. I’m trying not to scare her.”

“Have you guys talked about it at all since Prague?”

Will looks away.

“You slept together again after we got back? With everything that’s going on?!” she hisses. She smacks his arm. “Will!”

“I’m sorry, okay?! It was… complicated.” She waits until he speaks. It’s her easiest trick and it always works on him. “After she went to see Standish, she was… I don’t know, upset. Obviously. I hugged her, because I thought she needed it, and she let me.” He pauses again and Susan waits him out. “She kissed me. Not, like, a thank you kiss, or an I’m-glad-you're-here kiss, she-- I said no. I told her that I’d be there for her, but not like that because I didn’t think it’s what she really wanted.” He takes a deep breath. “She just didn’t-- she was going to stay in my guest room, but when we were driving to my apartment, I changed my mind. She was so upset, and just looking for a way to let that out, and I didn’t want her using someone else.”

“Because you were worried about her, or because you don’t want to share her?”

He grimaces. “Both.”

“Do you think it was the right choice?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do. We’re both consenting adults. She agreed.”

“That’s true.”

“I was worried that I’d feel bad about it afterwards. But I don’t.”

Susan nods. “You needed comfort too.”

He nods. “I mean-- that’s not-- she and I are so different, but--” He trails off and Susan knows there’s a lot he can’t say because he hasn’t sorted it out neatly enough to voice in words yet. “Yeah.”

“What do you want, Will? You’re going to have to decide. And then the two of you are going to have to decide together.”

“I know. Ugh, I know. I think we’re finally on the same page. But it doesn’t make me any less nervous.”

“I’d be worried if you weren’t,” Susan says with a sympathetic smile. “It would mean you didn’t like her.”

Will grins that boyish grin and actually blushes. “I do,” he admits. “I really do.”

Susan squeezes his arm. “Will, when you talk, you just…”

“Vomit my feelings?” he says, quoting Frankie.

“Yes,” Susan says with a smile. “But when you’re not speaking your thoughts, you’re harder to read. You and Frankie are opposites like that; you can read everything on her face, but she doesn’t say it. I just want you to remember that. Whatever you want her to know, you’re going to have to tell her.”

“Without vomiting it.” Will’s grin is shy, almost. He’s always been one to fall hard and fast, especially when it’s a relationship that’s bound to end badly, but there’s something here that she hasn’t seen before. It’s the first time she's ever seen this kind of shyness and she really didn't expect it. Like he’s nervous. Or worried, maybe.

“Exactly,” Susan says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a good thing we're not even halfway through this because I have some major writer's block as I work on the next one. Letting me know some specifics of what you like so far would be super helpful!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's late, but I've been dealing with the worst hiring event in the history of hiring events, so.

Susan’s phone ringing startles Frankie out of the daze she’d fallen into reviewing the NYPD files. Susan holds her phone up.

“Hi Ray, I’m with the team.”

“Hey party people!” Ray sounds tired but Will smiles at the return of his signature phrase. It makes Frankie want to smile too so she focuses on her irritation at Ray's habitual overuse of that greeting instead. “I am the bearer of some very good news: they’re waking Standish up in the morning. We don’t get to be there, but it means that they’re very optimistic about him making a full recovery.”

It’s a testament to how exhausted they are that the celebration takes the form of tired smiles rather than cheers, but Jai mutters, “Thank God,” loud enough that he speaks for all of them quite succinctly. Will looks at the ceiling and blows out a long breath. 

“That’s great,” Susan says with the sound of exhausted relief. “Will we be able to see him at all tomorrow?”

“They weren’t sure. They’re going to let Farah see him once he’s awake, probably, but they have to run, like, a whole bunch of tests and stuff. Honestly, I didn’t really understand most of it after they said he’s probably going to be fine.”

Susan smiles with a color she'd definitely deny was fondness and Frankie feels something wind a notch tighter in her chest that constricts almost like anger but doesn't taste the same. “Is Farah staying at the hospital tonight?”

“No, she’s going home and coming back in the morning.”

“Did she drive there?” Jai asks.

“No, she took a cab.”

“She shouldn’t take a cab home,” Will says.

“Yeah. Can… someone come pick us up?” He says it hopefully.

“I will, yeah,” Susan says.

“Okey-dokey. We’ll meet you in the lobby.”

Susan slips the phone back in her pocket. Will looks at Jai. “Can you set up surveillance on Farah’s apartment?”

Jai blinks at him. “Where exactly did you think I disappeared to for three hours earlier?”

Frankie smiles despite herself but quashes it quickly. “We should meet here in the morning,” she says.

Will nods. “Hopefully the NYPD’s surveillance on Pelletier will have something by then.”

Jai lifts his chin. “I’ll have something before they do.”

Susan shrugs one shoulder. “I’ll bring coffee.” She glances over the bar at the mangled, shattered remains of their coffee maker, its guts exposed and overflowing the plastic exterior like a Transformer whose Transformation had gone horribly wrong. “We’re going to have to add a new coffee maker to our list of things to replace.”

“Already ordered one,” Jai says.

Susan fistbumps him calmly.

“Okay,” Jai says. “I’m going to go sleep.” He collects his things as Susan digs her keys out of her pocket.

“I’m off to pick up Ray and Farah.”

She’s got a hand on the door when Jai says, “Oh! Susan! Can you, maybe, tell Farah not to worry if her microwave maybe... starts making a strange sound? I didn’t have time to-- either way, it’s fine.”

“Okay…” Susan says slowly as she clearly decides whether or not to let that statement lie. “Goodnight.” She lets the door close behind her.

“Probably,” Jai says.

Frankie just sighs. Jai follows Susan out after a moment, glass still crunching on the floor. He stops the door from closing behind him and looks back and her and Will. “Goodnight,” he says, then he’s gone. Frankie can see his relief at Standish’s prognosis in his remembered politeness.

The bar is eerily silent with everyone gone. Will shifts his weight and the glass crunches and grinds beneath his boots. There’s a tightness in his face, in the set of his mouth.

“You okay?” she asks before she can stop herself, before she can recall what she and Jai had just discussed.

"Yeah, I'm great," he says stiffly. 

She doesn't like this sudden change in him. He's been stressed, sure, with the weight of Standish's undetermined prognosis hanging over all of them, but something has shifted in just the last few minutes, a seismic disturbance she can feel but not quite pinpoint. There's no kindness in his expression, something she always, always sees in him. He's closed off, outwardly indifferent. She doesn't like it when he's like this. It worries her, twisting serpentine in her stomach. 

"Will--" she starts. She doesn't really know what she's trying to say. 

"I want Ollerman dead," he says flatly. 

"So do I." She surprises herself with how gently she says it. 

"What if…" The words trail off and Frankie takes a step closer to him. 

"What?"

"What if he doesn't live?" There's a nervous sort of grief there, even following in the wake of good news, a fear forcing the anticipation of disaster. 

"He's tough," she says, and then she smiles. "He gets that from you."

Will nods but doesn't smile. He's looking at her but he's so guarded that she can't even begin to know what he's thinking. He's hard enough to read sometimes even when he isn't actively hiding his thoughts like he is right now. He takes a step closer to her and she thinks he might kiss her but he hugs her instead. She freezes for a moment, not really sure what to do because in the past few days they've done things to each other a whole lot more intimate than this, but the only time he's ever hugged her was when she was having something that edges embarrassingly near a breakdown in the hospital last night. This is different, something so much deeper, something in a still moment, something she doesn't understand. 

He's tense against her, wired tight with emotion carefully suppressed, compressed into a chemical reaction that's generating anger. She's seen this before and knows that she needs to stop it. She'd said she'd liked it then, even though Emma was dead and Will was out of control, but she'd been lying to herself out of confusion and confliction and helplessness; she doesn't like to see this side of him at all. She hugs him back, awkwardly, wrapping her arms around his waist and sliding her hands slowly up his back until she's holding him against her. He presses his face into her neck like he's breathing her in and she rests her temple against his. 

It's weird. It's so weird. She'd asked him to be her comfort before and he's asking her to return that favor now and she doesn't know how. She likes the feel of him against her, though, in the still moment, just standing here. He's so quiet, just breathing, and that in itself unsettles her. He might drive her nuts with his constant sunshine commentary on life but it's in the best way and it's just _wrong_ to have him here so silent. 

She runs her hand down his neck and slowly down his back. 

Jai's right. She does love him. She doesn't know if she's _in_ love with him, but she definitely loves him. There’s a thin, important line there differentiating the two and she’ll hold onto it for all she’s worth until it dissolves in her hands.

She's really gone and fucked this one up. She was supposed to be his partner, she was supposed to put up with him because that's what professionals do, and she was supposed to live out the course of this assignment and then go back to being alone. She'd still have had Jai of course. 

That's how it should've been. It tastes something like betrayal to be thinking that when Will's seeking comfort from her, when she's tucked against his chest, warm and… well, she's not really sure what to name this other feeling. Protected, maybe. Like he's watching her back even with his own guard down. 

He leans away from her just enough to press his lips to her forehead. She closes her eyes and shoves every shred of fear and worry and anxiety down as deep as she can, where it can't hurt him. 

"Let's go," Will says as he releases her. She was so much warmer when he was close. "Do you need a ride to your apartment?"

"No.” He nods like he’d expected that answer. He’s never been to her apartment. She’s never even told him where she lives, despite it being just a couple blocks from his place. He always offers anyway, and she wonders if he’s trying to wear her down, to convince her to let him in both literally and figuratively. “I need to get my stuff." She hadn't even thought about it really, when she'd left. She's been spending so much time at his apartment lately that she just left her suitcase and assumed she'd be back later to get it.

Will locks the door to the bar behind them. 

He’s silent the whole ride to his apartment. It’s not very far, but Will being silent for any period of time is a red flag. A very large, very red flag. He should be talking about this restaurant down the street that he wants to try the next time the two of them get takeout, or the time he and Ray were on a mission somewhere, or one of the guys in his unit in Iraq, or a funny picture of his parents’ dog that they texted him, or his sister’s newest girlfriend who he thinks might be her soulmate, or the bottle of wine he bought last week that he thinks Frankie will love.

Instead, his hands are tight on the wheel and his lips are pressed tight. He jokes about the way he clenches his jaw like it's some kind of inside joke between him and Standish that she's never understood, but he’s doing it now and she knows there’s nothing funny about it.

He unlocks the door to his apartment and drops his keys carelessly on the table by the door. “You’re welcome to stay the night,” he says wearily. “I mean--” he cuts himself off and looks at her. “I just mean that you’re welcome to stay here.”

She doesn’t know what to say at his stumble.

“You might not want to, though,” he says, rubbing a hand over his forehead. He looks exhausted. “I don’t think I can sleep right now. I don’t want to keep you up.”

He means nothing more by it than what the statement says at face value, but her response slips out before she can spend even a heartbeat thinking about what a terrible idea it is. “We don’t have to sleep.” It’s a suggestion that for some reason sounds almost innocent when she says it. She just wants him to release some of this stress and return to being himself.

At first she doesn’t think he’s going to respond. He stays silent, but he’s watching her intensely. She takes a small step forward without thinking about it. He looks down at her and she looks up at him and they wait each other out. She refuses to make a move. She wants him to decide. 

He waits so long that she looks away and shifts her weight to step back. He slips his hands along her face until he’s gripping her jaw with his palms and he kisses her. She gasps through her nose in surprise because he’s less gentle than he’s ever been with her, even when both of them were rushing and eager in Prague. He pushes her back a step, unexpectedly, and her back hits the door. It sends a thrill of something twisting through her stomach; it’s not just arousal, but it's not just anxiety or excitement either. There’s absolutely no denying that she likes where this is going, but something is giving her pause. He grinds his hips against her and for a moment she loses her train of thought as he breaks the kiss to move his mouth to her neck.

His lips are relentless against her throat and he’s making her head fuzzy. There had been an argument building on her tongue as to why this is a bad idea but she’s a lot more focused on his tongue right now than her own. Even though she’d suggested this she hadn’t anticipated him reacting with an intensity like this. Will, who was always so gentle. Will, who was so gentle with her in Prague that second time that it had frightened her. He’d noticed, because of course he had, and he’d stopped loving her the way he wanted to and let her fuck him instead, let her be in control. She doesn’t know if he’s figured out that she’s different with him than with anyone else, though.

He runs his hand over her ass and down the back of her thigh until he’s gripping the back of her knee and hooking it over his hip. He grinds against her again and the friction of denim on denim makes her groan. 

She wonders if he knows this is how it always is for her when it isn’t for work and she's not pretending something for the sake of the mission, that it's always hard and fast and meaningless. She wonders if he’s doing this because he knew she’d rethink suggesting it in the first place and knows this is familiar. Less frightening. Not meaningless, though. Everything but meaningless.

What she doesn't think he realizes is that everything about him is frightening. Everything about him is an immediate threat to her. Except she suddenly can't get enough of him.

He grinds against her again, pressing her hard back against the door, and then lets her leg drop. She’s not thinking anymore. She grabs his belt and pulls him toward the bedroom. He works at his belt buckle as she unlaces her boots just enough to pull them off. He moves beside her to throw his jeans and his shirt into the hamper. He pulls her back against his chest, so suddenly she steps on his foot. He has the button on her jeans undone and his fingers inside her before she even knows what he’s doing, holding her against him with his other hand flat on her abs, fingers splayed. She makes a sound she’ll later remember as embarrassing. She tries to push her jeans off and after a minute he decides to help. She reaches for her shirt but his hands are already on the hem and he pulls it over her head. He moves with her onto the bed and pulls her by her hips until she’s straddling him. She looks down at him for a moment and then rolls off of him, reaching out to grab his wrist so she can pull him toward her again if he's willing. He pulls away but it’s to reach for the nightstand and then he's kissing her intently and she weaves her fingers in his hair.

He slides his hands down her body and presses his palms against her thighs, parting them until he can kneel between her knees. She wraps her legs around him and pulls him towards her. He pushes into her in one motion and swallows the sound she makes with his mouth.

He sets a merciless rhythm that she encourages with the grip of her legs and when he starts using his thumb she’s panting, every sound fringed with the voiced sound of the cry that’s building in her chest. She’s still wearing her bra and it’s rubbing against her back but it’s the last thing on her mind. She comes with a cry that tears free of her and Will’s hips jerk roughly against her once before he presses gentle kisses to her face and eases her through it. She reaches up and lets her hands wander over his back. She pauses when she feels him trembling. His face is buried in her neck. She strokes a hand down his spine and realizes that this had nothing to do with her, with how she is, and everything to do with him and what he needed.

She puts her feet flat on the bed and uses the leverage it gives her to gently draw him to climax. He moves against her and then his hips are jerking and he lets out a groan that starts as a growl against her throat as he comes anything but gently.

She strokes her hands along his back in gentle nonsense patterns until he rolls away from her. He settles onto his back and they lay there in the silence. Frankie is exhausted. She’s tired in a bone-deep kind of way, the kind that comes with a weight and pressure that settles deeper and more heavily than lack of sleep. Maybe she thought sex would burn it away. It did, a little, but not enough. 

Will gets up and pads quietly into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. 

Maybe she thought this would make both of them feel better. She hopes that some of the anger and the tension that was eating at him earlier is gone, but that hope is just a veneer covering the knowledge that everything that just happened was so uncharacteristic of him that she doesn’t know what to think at all.

He’s left the light on and the water running in the sink when he comes back to the bed. He settles on his side, facing away from her. She waits for him to speak but he stays silent. Eventually she slips off the bed and finds that he’s let the water run hot but tempered it with the cold knob turned just a bit so it doesn't run too hot as it’s wont to do in this building. There’s a fresh cloth folded on the edge of the sink for her.

She grips the porcelain and tries to breathe against the pressure in her chest. He’s too good to her. She can’t be this good to him. She’ll ruin him and she won't be able to stop it. 

She forces herself to breathe.

When she opens the door she can see in the light reaching towards him across the floor and brushing the edge of the bed that Will’s asleep. Actually asleep, not just avoiding her. 

She shuts the light off and moves as quietly as she can around the room, pulling her clothes on. Will rolls over on the bed and she freezes. He reaches out with a quiet sigh, sliding his hand across the sheets toward where she’d been sleeping last night. If she was there right now she knows he’d be pressed against her back, his arm around her, breathing softly as he sleeps. He wouldn't be snoring, at least, because he only snores when he's on his back. She's thrown enough pillows at him in hotel rooms to know that. 

He’s still again, apparently comfortable, and she pulls her shirt on. He didn’t pull the sheets or blankets up around him and she knows it's because he runs warm and however much he likes to be bundled up in a comforter or soft blanket it doesn’t usually last long. She wishes she was in his bed with him. She wishes he was warm against her.

She grabs her suitcase and shuts the door to Will’s apartment behind her. She turns her spare key and hears the deadbolt slide home.

It’s freezing in the elevator and a pressing feeling of claustrophobia that’s completely foreign to her starts to build as the numbers tick lower. She’s out into the lobby as soon as the doors open. 

She walks out into the rain without even noticing it and shivers immediately. “Great,” she mutters to herself. It’s quiet on the street, no taxis in sight. She needs to clear her head anyway. She starts walking to her apartment, fending off all thoughts that leaving isn’t really what she wanted to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I already say Complicated™️?


	12. Chapter 12

Will wakes with a headache. He smacks his phone to shut off the alarm and turns over. His head is pounding behind his eyes and he knows it's a side effect of how little sleep he’s gotten these past few days. He pushes himself up onto his hip immediately, looking for Frankie. The sheets beside him are cold as he runs his hand over them. Her suitcase is gone from where she’d left it yesterday. 

She’s gone and he hadn’t even heard her leave. 

There’s no note, no text message. He knows she could’ve left before he woke up to go back to her apartment for clean clothes since she hadn’t had a chance to wash anything in her suitcase. She knows him well enough, though, to have at least texted him to let him know she’d meet him at The Dead Drop. She hadn’t, which means she’d left. 

He presses his fingers against the nerves at the top of his nose to alleviate some of the ache in his head. He doesn’t know what happened last night. It was complicated in a way he doesn’t like. He doesn’t know what she was thinking. He doesn’t know what he was thinking. He’s confused about the whole thing and wants to tell her that, to confess that he hadn’t meant to show her a side of himself that he hates. He hates that anger and he hates that she let him show her, drawing it out of him like a poison. He hates that she put him on top, that she relinquished control of the situation to him just because he needed it. He hates that she left when he needed her.

He runs the shower hot and resolves to talk to her, bad timing be damned. Standish’s life is hanging in the balance and none of this should be happening right now, but if there’s one thing that was reinforced for him by Emma’s death it’s that there will never be a good time to say something that needs to be said unless you make time. He’s known it since his brother died, too young, too soon, too brutally. Will wasn’t in love with Emma and had never told her he loved her. He doesn’t regret that, because it would have been a lie in all the connotations it would’ve carried. He did love her, and maybe eventually could have been in love with her, but he wasn’t then and he never got the chance to be. He did tell her how much he liked her, how much he liked spending time with her and enjoyed her company. He was always honest with her and that was one solace he could take when she was killed. 

He hasn’t told Frankie everything. Not everything that matters, at least. He had told her in England that he didn't like denying their feelings but that he understood, because he did. He’d said he didn’t like it. But he never told her that he thought his feelings for her would burn themselves out. He never told her that they’d just burned brighter, despite Emma, despite everything, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. 

He’d told her in Prague that he’d hoped she’d find him there. It had been implicit in that statement that he’d been waiting for her but he’d never actually said how badly he wanted her to make the choice to be there. He’s pretty sure she was hoping to find him there too, but he hadn’t asked. He wants to.

He will, and he thinks he can convince her to be honest with him. He thinks she wants this too, and that she’s finally willing to confront that with him.

He steps into the shower and lets the hot water ease some of the tension out of his neck. He feels optimistic for the first time since Prague.

**

Jai settles next to Frankie at the bar. He can see the shadows under her eyes that she barely bothered to cover with concealer. She’s staring unfocused at the file in front of her and doesn’t look up as he sits. “You told him?” he asks. She smells like her own shampoo and is wearing a shirt he knows she didn’t bring to Prague, which means she at least went to her own place this morning. He knows she was exhausted enough to have slept through just about anything last night, and the worry about Standish should've abated a bit with the good news Ray had delivered, so he’s guessing her sleeplessness has to do with her guilt at having told Will that she was ending their tryst before it edged any further towards disaster.

“I’m not talking about this,” she says stiffly.

“So you didn’t, then.”

“I’m _not_ talking about this.”

“Francesca…”

“ _Don’t_ ,” she says, looking up from the file. “I’m going to. I just haven’t yet.”

“Did you spend the night at his apartment?”

“No,” she says, a little too quickly to be entirely convincing. “I got my stuff and went back to my apartment.”

The door opens and Ray and Susan enter before Jai can continue grilling Frankie and reminding her what a terrible idea this is.

Susan sets the carrier of coffee on the bar. “Where’s Will?”

Jai looks at Frankie. 

“How would I know?” she says stiffly. “Text him and ask.”

Ray extracts a coffee from the carrier and checks the marks on the side before he puts it on the bar next to Jai. “Can you give that to her, please?”

Jai slides it over. “Why couldn’t you do it yourself?” he grouses.

“Oh, I could’ve. But I don’t want to lose my hand.” Ray wiggles his fingers and Frankie glares at him.

The door opens again and Will walks in. “Good morning,” he says mildly. “Ooh, thanks!” he says as Susan hands him his coffee. He settles on the bar stool next to Frankie, whose eyes flick to him for just a moment before she looks away. Will doesn’t look at her, instead focused on Ray as he claps his hands.

“The NYPD has a lead on Pelletier,” Ray announces.

“Ugh!” Jai says, thumping a fist against the bar in frustration at his defeat.

“One of the informants has placed him at a nightclub called _Pier Seventeen_ several nights over the past few weeks. They don’t think this is new activity, which suggests that this could at the very least be one of the places that Pelletier meets with the Perrettis or one of their representatives.”

“If we can get past Pelletier to the Perrettis, we can get to Ollerman,” Will says. Frankie looks at him and he meets her eyes for a moment before looking back at Ray.

“If Ollerman is even working with the Perrettis,” Susan says, tempering Will’s statement. 

Frankie shakes her head. “There has to be an angle somewhere. They must have something he wants.”

“If he’s involved at all,” Susan says. 

“He has to be,” Jai says.

Susan presses her lips together. “I know we all want this to be the break we need, and I think we have a chance here, but we all have to be prepared if this turns out to be a coincidence. _I know_ ,” she says, holding a hand up as Jai opens his mouth, “that Pelletier disappearing right after Ollerman is a massive, massive coincidence, and I agree that the Perrettis would be very interested in someone with as much power, influence, and money as Ollerman. But I’ve seen nothing that would convince me he’d be interested in them. A struggling coke business that you can’t even begin to call an empire?” She shakes her head. “I don’t know guys. I don't think they’re what we’re looking for. It’s too small-scale.”

“We won’t know until we can get in there,” Will says. “We need an in.”

“Already done,” Ray says. “The NYPD’s informant can get you in as bouncers tonight. They pay cash under the table and usually only employ a few days at a time. Their guy is responsible for recruiting temporary talent. You have to be at the club’s back entrance at eight.”

Will frowns. “That’s too easy.”

“The guy I’m liaising with at the NYPD says this guy has worked for a few years now to get in good with the Perrettis, passing info to the cops. He’s got some kind of grudge, I guess.” Ray shrugs.

“I’ll find out who supplies the phone and internet service to the club,” Jai says. “I’ll plant surveillance in the building and get us into the computer system.”

“I guess that leaves us going clubbing?” Frankie asks Susan.

Susan grimaces. “That leaves you going clubbing. Insead of having fun in the field, I’ll be here with Jai so I can pick out any of the club patrons who might be persons of interest that we don’t already have files on.” She grins. “But I’ll help you shop.”

“So, we can run the play at midnight,” Frankie says. “Gives you guys plenty of time to settle into place as bouncers and the club is full by then.”

Jai raps his knuckles on the table. “I’ll set up the fake IDs when I get back from setting up at the club.”

“Okay,” Ray says. “We have,” he consults his watch, “sixteen hours to prep. Minus time to take a nap, because this is going to be a long night.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to Tyrsenian for reminding me to get back on track.

“God, this shirt is so itchy. No wonder I never wear it.”

“Romeo,” Jai says mildly through the coms to Ray, “shut up.”

Ray and Will are standing on opposite sides of the bar, surveying the crowd of dancers under the lights. “I keep smelling onion rings. Do you smell onion rings? I didn’t know they served food here.”

“Romeo,” Susan says through the coms, “shut the hell up.”

“It’s midnight,” Jai says. “Fiery’s at the front of the line, walking in now.”

Ray is bored. They’ve only had two belligerent patrons tonight to throw out, and while he knows his job is to surveil and not to actually be a bouncer, there doesn’t seem to be much to surveil either. He scans the crowd again for the umpteenth time, still looking for anyone they've IDed as of interest. He perks up a bit when he finally notices a man right at the edge of the crowd, standing near where the blueprints they studied detail a series of offices and a VIP room. Ray moves around the front of the bar to where Will’s standing.

“Yeah, I see him too,” Will says.

“Lawrence Perretti,” Susan clarifies for them. “One of Jack Perretti’s sons.”

The bartender leans her elbows on the bar. She’s young, maybe a student paying her way through college, and pretty in a plain sort of way, very attractive but not striking. Will’s usual type, Ray knows. “You guys are a lot more clean-cut than the usual bouncers we get,” she says to them. “You cops?”

“We’re not cops,” Ray scoffs.

The bartender looks skeptical. “Yeah. Okay.”

Will turns toward her and smiles his best douchebag smile. “I’m happy to show you that I’m not wearing a wire,” he says, reaching for the buttons of his shirt before she can say no.

“I’m not as sexy as he is, but I’m also happy to unbutton my shirt,” Ray says.

She holds up a hand. “Just… keep your shirts on. Jesus.” She casts another disapproving look on them and walks back toward the patrons flagging her and the other two bartenders.

Will closes the button of his shirt without even watching the bartender walk away. Ray looks at him for a minute. 

“What?”

“You didn’t even flirt with that girl,” he says.

Will blinks at him. “We’re working.”

“And what would've been better for our cover? We could've gotten intel from her. She might know something.”

“What, you want me to flirt with her? I’ll flirt with her later.”

Jai’s voice cuts through. “Can we focus, please? Fiery’s inside, moving toward the bar.”

Ray is looking at Will when Will spots her. Ray turns and sees Frankie cutting through the crowd until she gets a space at the counter to order a drink. She’s very, very easy to spot in the dress Susan picked. It doesn’t leave very much to the imagination, not that Ray’s imagination wasn’t scared into the chastity of a devout nun concerning her the very first day they met. The day they properly met, not the day they sort-of-met, when he almost died on the floor of his own cottage. He’s aware, though, that he’s probably the only one in the entire building not struck by her. Ray looks back at Will. “You might want to close your mouth,” he says. Will blinks and shuts his mouth, pressing his lips tight. “Ogling your partner isn’t going to get us intel, but ogling the bartender might,” Ray jokes. “Granted, I think every straight guy and gay woman in this place is ogling Fiery right now.”

The bartender they were just talking to smiles at Frankie as she slides the drink across the bar. Ray can tell that Frankie takes the glass in a way that ensures their fingers brush. Frankie smiles and leans closer to talk to the girl.

“Have you worked here long?” she asks innocently. “I’ve been here a couple times now but I don’t remember seeing you. And I think I would’ve remembered.” 

“No,” the bartender says with a shy smile. “I just started a couple weeks ago. I’m trying to pay my way through grad school.” She shrugs. “You know how it is.”

Ray's impressed. “Classic line. Looks like she’s doing your job for you, Whiskey,” he says. “I think she’s got a much better chance with the bartender. She’s, like, _way_ hotter in that dress than you are in that jacket right now.” 

Will just glares at him.

“Enough,” Susan snaps into the coms.

“I’m just saying.”

“I picked that dress. I know exactly how hot she is in it. How about the two of you focus on the Perrettis and let Fiery do her job. If that means flirting with the bartender, then let her flirt with the bartender.”

Will shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Ray can read the tension in his shoulders but doesn’t really understand it. 

**

Frankie is still chatting with the bartender when her coms click on. “Fiery,” Jai says, “we have intel for you.”

“I’ll be back for another drink,” she says to the girl and winks. The girl blushes.

She turns towards the dance floor and takes a sip of her drink. “Go ahead,” she says, her lips blocked by the glass.

“You spotted Lawrence Perretti when you walked in?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s running drug deals out of the VIP room.”

“And?”

“It’s not cocaine. It’s something else. Pills.”

“Okay.”

“Get a closer look, find out what it is.”

“Okay.”

She moves through the crowd and makes her way toward the hallway that leads to the VIP room. She smiles at Lawrence Perretti, stepping carefully in her heels like she’s already drunk. “Hi,” she says softly, a little sultry at the edges. He looks her over. “I hear you have something I’m interested in.”

“I’m sure I do,” he says with a lascivious grin that she immediately wants to punch off his face. He’s handsome, in a way that says he’s trying too hard.

“Give him a hard time,” Susan says. “You’ll get his attention.”

She pushes her disgust down deep and smiles. “I was thinking of something a little more pleasurable,” she says.

Susan’s right and Lawrence grins. “Hard to please, then,” he says with that hunger on his face. He’s looking at her like she’s meat. She shouldn’t be surprised; so many of her marks are like this. Will’s never looked at her like that, though. With desire, yes, but never like he wants to claim her. Not like a predator. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Lorelai,” she says.

“Lovely name.” Lawrence reaches out and she steps forward with a smile. He slides his hand along her lower back until it’s resting low on her opposite hip. He guides her forward, entirely unaware that she’s also a predator, just of a different kind. 

He pushes open the door to reveal a dark room set with couches and a private DJ. “VIP!” she giggles to Lawrence. He just smiles.

She can’t even hear the music from the main club through the walls and under the music here. There’s a man sprawled across one of the couches in a drunken stupor, a giggling couple across from him who’ve apparently forgotten they're in public, and a mass of people dancing by the DJ, leaving just a narrow space to skirt the crowd. 

“Al!” Lawrence says as they approach a table in the corner. “I have a lovely lady here who’s interested in your product.” He smiles at her as he says it, then looks back at his brother. “This is Lorelai.”

She knows Alan Perretti skated through NYU with grades just high enough to graduate last year with a BS in chemical engineering. Jai had suggested that this made him more dangerous than his brother because he may have a bigger stake in the drug activities of the family, but Susan hadn’t seen anything in his profile that flagged him as more of a concern. From his photo Frankie hadn’t pictured a young man as sallow or sullen as the one before her.

“How’d you hear about it?” Alan asks.

She just shrugs and smiles like she’s pleasantly drunk. “Friend of a friend said she got something good here. Couldn’t remember what it was called.”

Lawrence claps his brother on the shoulder. “That’s some good shit, baby, but people forgetting what it’s called is a sucky business model.”

“It’s not my problem what some whore does or doesn’t remember,” Alan says evenly. Frankie hasn’t seen a single expression cross his face. “Your friend’s friend, she said it was good?” 

“Yeah,” she says, confused. Actually confused.

“Has she told others too?”

Frankie lets her confusion show on her face with a smile. “Is this, like, a job interview or something? I don’t understand.”

“A survey,” Alan says. 

“Okay,” Frankie says, still confused. 

Lawrence sits beside her, sliding a hand along her thigh under the table.

She smiles at him.

“Fifty bucks,” Alan says. 

Frankie reaches into her bra and counts it out, sliding it across the table to him. He slides a bag back across to her. There are more pills than she expected.

“Tell your friends about it,” Alan says. “It’s called glitter. You’ll find it easier soon.”

“But don't let that stop you from coming back here,” Lawrence says with a smile, moving his hand along her thigh again. She’s glad she’d decided not to wear a thigh holster; his fingers would’ve already touched it by now. She wants to break them. His phone rings and he takes it out of his pocket. “Excuse me,” he says with a wink.

“Thanks,” Frankie says to Alan.

“Aren’t you going to try it?” he asks.

“I have friends coming in a bit,” she says, wiggling the bag. “It’s to share.”

Lawrence comes back to the table. “Well why don’t you hang out with us until they get here.” She stands from her seat, slipping the pills into her bra as well. Lawrence slides an arm around her waist, pulling her flush against him. She laughs, stumbling into him like she’s drunk, and puts her hands on his chest in case she needs to push him away. 

“I was gonna go see if they’re here yet,” she laughs. 

Lawrence picks up her drink and hands it to her. “Well, don’t forget this, then.” She smiles and takes a sip for good measure, maintaining her eye contact with him. “Let me walk you out,” Lawrence says.

He guides her back across the room with his hand on her hip and she almost twists an ankle in her heels as he opens the door. She laughs it off but it wasn’t intentional at all; she feels drunk. Lawrence pushes her forward again. The ceiling lights are swimming and she’s suddenly struggling to keep her balance.

“Did you-- did you drug me?” she says on a muddled exhale.

Lawrence plucks the glass out of her hand. “Let me take that before you drop it.”

Her coms click on. “Fiery, what’s happening?” It’s Jai.

There are little pinpricks of light sparkling in her vision as Lawrence guides her down the hall. The ceiling lights are shining like sunlight on the water. “What’d you give me?” she asks Lawrence.

“Consider it a sample,” he says. “A really strong sample.”

He pulls her to a stop with a rough grip on her arm. She loses her balance and the pinpricks of lights dance unpredictably in her vision. She giggles. She would have fallen if Lawrence didn’t still have his arm around her. 

“Fiery,” Will says. “Fiery, respond.”

Lawrence opens a door and shoves her inside. She hits the floor without even trying to catch herself. She giggles a little, then realizes that she shouldn’t and pushes herself from her side onto her back. It’s as much effort as she can make toward getting to her feet even though her legs are uncomfortably twisted up. She feels great, oddly relaxed and somehow just… happy. 

The door opens again and another man walks in. Frankie doesn’t even look at him.

“Fiery, respond,” Will snaps in her ear. If she were more alert she’d hear the panic in his voice.

“He told me they might show up,” the man who isn’t Lawrence says. Frankie just watches the glitter move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's get one thing straight. Frankie is a bamf who can take care of herself. This isn't a damsel-in-distress situation; it's an exploration of another character.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A second chapter, because Tyrsenian deserves it.

“Janus, where is she,” Will snaps.

“She’s still in the building. Second office, right side of the hall.”

“Is there any chance of her salvaging this?” Ray asks.

“No,” Susan says. “She hasn’t moved; I don’t think she's conscious. She needs immediate extraction.”

Will cuts through the crowd with Ray right behind him.

“Both of the targets are facing inside the room,” Jai says. “Lawrence Perretti is on the left, about… ten feet inside the room. The other target is Jack Perretti; he’s by the right hand wall.”

“We don’t have clearance to use lethal force,” Susan says. 

They stop just outside the office door. “Cut the lights on three,” Will says. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Jai says.

“One… two…” he closes his hand around the knob.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Ray says, “on three or after three?”

“On three,” Will says in disbelief. “One… two…”

“Three,” Jai says and the lights go out. Will pulls the door open. He can see two figures in the dim illumination of the emergency light in the corner but can’t see Frankie on the floor. “Lights on in three… two… one,” Jai says. 

The lights come on and Frankie turns her head on the floor. Lawrence Perretti turns toward the door and sees Will, who immediately punches him in the face, sending him to the floor. He starts to push himself up so Will grabs him by the collar and punches him again. Lawrence swings wildly and Will reads the telegraphed move, stepping aside. He pulls Lawrence backward towards him and locks an arm around his neck. Lawrence is almost as tall as Will but isn’t as strong or as used to fighting his way out of situations like this. Will shoves him into a heap on the floor, unconscious. He looks down at him, his face numb with rage. 

“There were easier ways to do that,” Ray says, holding up the pistol he’d used to knock Jack Perretti unconscious.

Will looks down again and resists the urge to kick Lawrence.

Instead, he kneels next to Frankie. Susan was wrong; she wasn’t unconscious. Her eyes are open and she’s watching him with a smile. “Hi!” she says softly, but with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.

“You okay?”

“I’m great!” she says. Her smile is real, but it’s so unrestrained that he knows it isn’t genuine but rather a side effect of whatever they’ve drugged her with. As if it wasn’t apparent enough how high she is by how slurred her speech is. “That was actually really sexy,” she says, wide-eyed and suddenly serious.

“What?” He knows she always teases him about being less suave than he thinks he is, but that didn’t sound like a joke.

Her eyes slip past him again and she looks into the open air. 

“We’ve got to go; come on.”

“I’m okay,” she says with a content sigh.

“What-- come on.” She makes no move to get up. “Let’s go.” He doesn't know if she’s ignoring him or just isn’t understanding. “Okay. Let’s do it the hard way, I guess.” The fabric of her dress is shiny and fitted and anything but something she’d choose for herself so Will tries to pull the hem down as much as he can before he picks her up. He knows the last thing he should be worried about right now is her modesty, but he figures she’d rather not let everyone see her underwear. She giggles at the touch of his hands on her skin. “Just... do yourself a favor and don’t talk.” He picks her up and she wraps her arms around his neck. 

“Janus, get us out of here,” Ray says. Frankie grabs the label of Will’s jacket. She tips her head back and smiles drunkenly up at him.

“Down the hall, two doors down the opposite side is an emergency exit. I’ve deactivated the alarm on it. As soon as you’re out I’ll shut the lights off again. Make it harder for them to follow you.”

Ray pushes the door open and Frankie buries her face in Will's neck at the bright streetlights. 

“Lights out,” Jai says. 

Ray jumps into the driver’s seat. Will shoves Frankie into the back. “You can’t drive yet!”

“I’m not dealing with her,” Ray says. “She might say something embarrassing to me and then kill me later so I can’t repeat it.”

“Fine.” Will slides into the back and wraps an arm around Frankie’s waist to keep her upright. Ray peels out of the parking lot and Frankie slumps against Will. “You okay?” he asks.

“Less great,” she mumbles.

“Okay.” She’s pliant against him, boneless, making no effort to hold herself up. He puts a hand behind her head and the other around her shoulders and lets her lie down on the back seat with her head in his lap. 

By the time they make it to The Dead Drop, she's only semi-conscious. 

"Help me with her," Will snaps to Ray. He hooks his arms under her armpits and pulls her toward the door. "Come on boo," he jokes, trying to keep his voice light, "help me out here."

She doesn't. 

Ray helps him pull her from the truck and shuts the door when Will finally has ahold of her. He throws the doors of the bar open so Will can carry her through. 

"Think I'm gonna throw up," she mumbles. 

"Okay," Will says, carrying her toward the bathroom, "just try not to throw up on me." 

Susan follows them and shoves open the door to the women's room, the only bathroom they use in the bar given that the sinks in the men’s only function as a secret entrance to the batcave and not as actual sinks. She squeezes into the stall next to Will and helps him settle with Frankie on the tiled floor. Will sits with her in his lap and keeps her upright; Susan holds her hair back as she's repeatedly sick. Will just rubs her back and waits. 

She relaxes against Will and he adjusts his arms around her. “You okay?”

She just grunts a response that could be interpreted any number of ways. Susan gets up and flushes the toilet before disappearing from view. Will hears the water running in the sink. Frankie has goosebumps raised on her arms; Will rubs a hand slowly over her skin to warm her up a bit. She’s trembling beneath his touch. 

Susan kneels beside them a moment later, handing Will a wet paper towel. “Thanks,” he says. “I left a sweatshirt upstairs the other day; can you go grab it for her?”

“Yeah. I’ll be right back.”

Frankie is limp against him and he wonders if she’s conscious at all. He wipes away the perspiration on her forehead with the wet towel. He folds it over itself and uses it to wipe her mouth before he drops it in the toilet.

Susan reappears with Will’s sweatshirt and a bottle of water. The stall door hits the wall as Susan kneels on the floor, elbowing it by accident, and Frankie blinks at her. “Okay Franks,” Susan says to keep her attention, “can you sit up?”

She doesn’t move at all in Will’s hold. “Okay,” he says. He shifts so that he’s sitting her up a little more, one hand supporting the back of her neck.

Susan reaches through the sleeves of the hoodie one at a time, grabbing Frankie’s hands and pushing the sleeves up her arms. Susan and Will together pull the sweatshirt over Frankie’s head. Will pulls it down around her waist. 

“Too good to me,” she mumbles. She’s looking in Susan’s general direction but Will is pretty sure the words are meant for him. 

“How do you feel?” Susan asks.

“Good,” Frankie sighs. 

“Good?” Susan repeats. Frankie doesn’t answer. “Do you know what you were drugged with?”

“Looks like glitter,” she says, blinking dazedly at nothing at all.

Susan looks at Will. “The stuff the Perrettis engineered.” Frankie rests her cheek against Will’s chest and closes her eyes. “Do you still have the pills you bought off him?”

“Yeah,” Frankie sighs, so soft Will almost doesn’t hear the agreement.

“Where are they?” Will asks. Frankie doesn’t answer. Susan just looks at him. “That was a stupid question, wasn’t it.” It’s not like the dress has pockets, and Will knows the way Frankie plays a cover like this well enough to know she’d have stuffed the pills in her bra. He looks at Susan with a plea on his face.

“No way,” she says, holding her hands up. “This is on you.”

“How is it less weird for me to do it?” he protests.

“Because I know for a fact that you went a lot further than second base with her already,” Susan says. 

Will feels his face go red.

“Come on,” Susan says. “It was inevitable. You can’t fight fate, Will.”

“Yeah,” he says.

Susan waits for a moment for him to speak before she says, “Will, Jai needs those pills so he can analyze them.”

“This is so wrong,” he mutters. “Frankie,” he prompts, hoping she’s awake enough to consent to him shoving his hand into her bra, because otherwise this is absolutely not at all okay. She doesn’t respond. “God.” He looks at Susan. “Not a word of this, ever.” Susan nods like she understands that he means the situation should never be the butt of a joke because nothing about it is funny. Frankie is still resting against his chest, her eyes closed and face unworried. Very definitely unconscious. “I’ll apologize later,” he says to her. 

He fishes the wad of cash out of one side of her bra and the drugs from the other. He hands them to Susan.

“She trusts you,” Susan says. “She wouldn’t have slept with you twice, otherwise. She would’ve put a stop to things immediately.”

“Yeah,” Will says. 

There must be something in the way he says it because Susan presses her lips together. “Will,” she sighs.

Thinking about last night makes him remember how upset he is with himself. “We’re not talking about this,” he snaps. Susan looks surprised. “Help me get her up. I’ll put her on the couch upstairs.”

Will carries Frankie through the bar and Jai and Ray look up from the table they’re sitting at. Susan brings Jai the packet of pills. 

“Is she okay?” Ray asks.

“Of course she’s okay,” Jai says stiffly.

“She’s okay,” Susan confirms. “High as a kite, but okay. Will’s going to stay with her to make sure she’s fine.”

Will carries her up the stairs and ignores Jai watching him. 

The couch is old but they'd managed to poach it from a yard sale in good condition a few months ago. Will lays Frankie down on it. The motion rouses her enough for her to try to open her eyes, but she doesn’t quite succeed. Will brushes her hair out of her face. His hoodie is big on her and the sleeves fall over her hands. She’s not a small woman and she’s constantly so full of fire that it often makes her seem larger than life, but he’s taller and broader than her and she’s all but swimming in the fabric. Even after performing emergency surgery on her with her laid out on Ray’s kitchen table, bleeding and panicked that first mission they begrudgingly worked together on, even after sitting on the floor of the cottage with her head in his lap and his hands pressing on the dust-covered kitchen towels that he was trying to use to stop her from bleeding to death after her roll off the table had aggravated her wound, this is maybe the first time she’s ever looked fragile to him. She hasn’t changed, though. The way he feels about her has. He hates the thought as soon as it occurs to him. It’s easier for him to think of her as dauntless and indomitable because that makes it easier not to worry about her safety in the field.

“Don’t leave,” she mumbles.

“Frankie,” he starts.

“Don’t leave,” she says.

He stays, because she asked.

He curls around her on the couch, partly facing the back, mostly lying down. He has to move her to fit both of them so he shifts her so that she’s against his chest.

There’s lipstick smeared at the corner of her lips from where he’d wiped her mouth earlier; he wipes it away with his thumb.

Will lets Frankie sleep and worries about Standish. He hopes everything went well when they woke him up. They’d had to leave Farah with a couple of FBI agents stationed in the trauma ward to make sure she and Standish were safe when the rest of them had gone after the Perrettis.

Almost as if on cue, his phone buzzes. It’s a text from Susan: “Ray and I are going to the hospital. Jai’s staying here to test those drugs. Let us know how Frankie is when she wakes up.”

“Will do,” he replies. “Let us know how Standish is.”

“We will,” she says.

Will sets his phone down and watches Frankie sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to get one thing straight before the next chapter on Wednesday. A lot of times when something like this is done to a female character, it's degrading and horrifying and often extremely offputting. I went this direction with the plotline because the Perrettis are extremely important to the building plot of the series, and all of this is going to be relevant. I also wanted to take Frankie's comfort with using her body as a tool and flip it on its head to look at Will's ideas of consent and what they would mean in a situation like this.
> 
> Also, points to anyone who caught the _Lethal Weapon_ reference.


	15. Chapter 15

Frankie wakes up with a blinding headache and a terrible taste in her mouth. Her face and her hands are kind of numb and she has no idea where she is. It reminds her of a good few dozen mornings where she’d woken up feeling just like this, on the floor, in Marco’s car, in a stranger’s bed. That was a long time ago but being aware that it was a long time ago doesn’t diminish her disgust with herself for it having happened again. She tries to push herself into a sitting position but someone’s arms are around her.

“Hey you,” Will says. “How are you feeling?”

She presses a shaking hand to her face. “Awful.” Will helps her sit up. She’s starting to remember that this mess wasn’t actually her fault, beyond having sipped from a drink that Lawrence Perretti had touched. Of course he’d roofied her, the creep. She’d taken the sip to seem relaxed but in hindsight it was a stupid move.

Will has his arm around her shoulders and she shrugs it away. Everything’s pouring back to her now in a wave. She remembers Jack Perretti saying he’d been tipped off that they were there. She remembers Will choking out Lawrence Perretti. Will, who always teased her for doing things the hard way when there was an easier way. He could’ve just knocked Perretti unconscious. She remembers the anger still blank on his face when he’d knelt next to her. He’d picked her up off the floor and that was all she remembers before waking up now, on Will’s chest, in Will’s sweatshirt, with Will’s arms around her.

She scoots away from him on the couch so there’s space between them. 

The glitter and the haze is finally gone from her vision, at least. All the false happiness it had brought her is gone too. It was a party drug, then, the kind of stupid shit she and Marco would’ve done in Italy when she was nineteen and foolish and hurting.

Will puts a hand on her back. “Are you okay?” he asks.

She pushes his hand away. “What are you doing?” she snaps.

“What?” He’s bewildered and she hates herself.

“Why are you even here?”

“You asked me to stay,” he says and there’s an edge to it. She doesn’t remember that. “If you’re mad about the drugs, I just want you to know that I’m really sorry; Jai needed them and I never wanted to make you feel uncomfortable, but--”

“What?” she says, cutting him off.

Will blinks at her. “I took the drugs out of your bra,” he says.

“What? I don’t care about you putting your hand down my shirt,” she spits. She doesn’t. She’d rather have been awake for it and have had it be under very different circumstances, but she trusts him. Against everything she believes, she trusts him. That’s the problem.

“I don’t understand,” Will says. 

“I just woke up with you, all cuddled up on the couch where anyone could walk in. We can’t _do this_.”

"I thought this was what you wanted?" he says, and there's anger there fringing around the edges. 

"It was a mistake. All of this was a mistake.”

"A mistake," he repeats. There’s a long moment where he pauses and she just looks at him, unwilling to back down. "I don't believe you," he says. 

"You don't have to," she snaps. “You know I’m right. Ollerman will exploit any weakness he can find.”

“You think this is weakness?”

“I know it is.”

“I’ve wanted to ask you since Prague: did you come looking for me?”

“No,” she says. It’s even and direct. It’s also an outright lie.

Will studies her and she knows immediately that he’s looking right through her.

“Sex is just sex,” Frankie says. “That’s all it is with us.”

“You know me better than that,” he says.

“And I thought you knew me better than to expect it to be anything more,” she bites back.

Will looks like she’s slapped him. She does know him well enough to not assume he finds anything meaningless. She also knows him well enough to hurt him best. 

She picks up her heels from where he placed them on the floor and stands unsteadily from the couch.

“Frankie, wait,” Will says as she moves toward the door.

She puts her hand on his chest and holds him at arm’s length, her shoulders still angled away. “This isn’t one of your stupid romcoms. There’s no winning me over, no dramatic scene where I reconsider.” She lets her hand drop and he doesn’t move. “This was a bad idea and I’m putting a stop to it.”

“Don’t do this,” he pleads. “I know you’re scared, but--”

“You don’t know me,” she snaps. “You’re a fool if you ever thought something between us would last.” She knows it's cruel and it’s exactly the opposite of what she wants to say, but she says it anyway. If she breaks his heart now it’ll be kinder in the long run. He’ll get over whatever it is he thinks he feels for her and move on.

For the first time, Will looks like he’s actually angry with her. Not irritated, not frustrated, not just mad, angry. 

“You said this was a mistake,” he says evenly, “but you’re making the mistake right now.”

She shakes her head. “I’m not.” His words make her doubt, though, even as she turns toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

“To have Jai drive me back to my apartment.”

“Should you be alone?”

“I’m fine. I’ll sleep it off.” It won’t be the first time she has. She slips her heels on because they haven’t swept up the glass and she walks slowly down the stairs, gripping the rails. She’s still dizzy and unsteady from the glitter but Will doesn’t follow her. 

Jai stands from the table he’s been sitting at and walks with her toward the door, handing her the bag with her clothes in it.

She slides in the passenger side and Jai still says nothing even though she knows he heard everything. 

When he pulls up in front of her building he squeezes her hand. “It’s better this way.”

“I know,” she says. He studies her for a moment like he knows she doubts. “Thanks for the ride.”

“I’ll come get you in the morning.”

She looks at the clock. “It is morning.”

“Yes. It is.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“About four hours.”

“No wonder I still feel like shit. Thought it was longer.”

“I’ll pick you up at ten.”

“Make sure you text me if there are any updates on Standish.”

“You know I will.”

She smiles thinly. “I know.”

She takes the elevator up instead of the stairs and unlocks her apartment, almost using Will’s spare key by accident. It's just another bit of proof that she's probably making the right decision. 

She sheds the stupid club dress and pulls on shorts and an old NYU t-shirt she’d gotten during the one semester she'd spent there. She looks at Will’s sweatshirt where she’d tossed it on her bed. It’s from some Indiana fundraiser marathon to raise money for victims of domestic violence. Knowing Will, he’d probably helped organize the whole thing, too.

She pulls the hoodie on and climbs into her bed, setting an alarm on her phone so she has enough time to shower before Jai picks her up. The sheets are freezing against her legs and if she snuggles herself into the collar of the hoodie it’s because she’s cold, not because it still smells like Will.


	16. Chapter 16

Jai pulls up outside Frankie’s building at exactly one minute before ten. Frankie slides into the passenger side of the car at exactly ten. 

She’s silent the whole way to The Dead Drop. He doesn’t know what to say to her beyond, “You saw Susan’s text?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I saw it when I woke up. Good news, finally.”

Jai nods in agreement. Susan had texted them after he dropped Frankie off, letting them know that everything with Standish yesterday had gone well. He’d been very disoriented, of course, but physically everything was good. Farah had been allowed to see him and she’d told Susan that Standish had been really confused but upon being told he’d been attacked had said, “That bitch,” but nothing else coherent on the subject. Jai figures either way that it’s a pretty good sign.

Frankie gets out of the car without another word.

Will walks into the bar before they’ve even sat down, a tray of coffees in one hand and his own cup in the other. “For you,” he says to Jai. He sounds awfully chipper after the conversation Jai overheard last night. “For you,” he says to Frankie, setting her cup on the bar. Jai is surprised to see the tag of the tea bag trailing down the side of the cup. Frankie looks up at Will as he moves away, back around the corner of the bar. Jai considers whether or not he should be surprised. Coffee is probably the last thing Frankie should be drinking this morning, but Jai’s pretty sure he wouldn't have considered that ahead of time like Will had.

“Where are Susan and Ray?” Will asks him.

“I don’t know,” Jai says as he sips his Americano.

Will sits on the stool beside Jai, leaving him between Will and Frankie. Jai looks between them. Frankie is looking across the bar at the mess they still need to clean up, chewing on her lip. Will is studying the lid of his coffee cup like the “caution: hot” inscription is some kind of incredibly important intel he needs to understand.

Susan and Ray walk in. Susan pauses by the door, looking at Will, then Jai, then Frankie, then at Will again. “Wow,” she says. “Okay.”

Ray looks at Susan and then back at the three of them with confusion so clear on his face that even Jai can see it immediately. 

Susan sits beside Will. “None of this is going to be a problem, is it?”

Frankie looks at her in alarm.

“Come on,” Susan says to her in disbelief.

“Not a problem,” Will says. 

“Okay,” Susan says.

“Anyway,” Ray says, still clearly not following. He claps his hands together.

Will looks at him expectantly. “Anyway?”

“No, that’s all I’ve got.”

Will frowns. “We need a plan.”

“Let me start us off, then,” Jai says. “I finished analyzing the drug that Alan Perretti called ‘glitter’. It’s a combination of synthetic compounds that trigger a release of endorphins, which in turn triggers the release of dopamine in the brain, creating a false sense of happiness and pleasure.”

“Why did it actually look like glitter?” Frankie asks. “I could actually see glitter.”

“It triggers tiny little neuron firings on your optic nerve, creating the illusion of something sparkling. Like glitter.”

“How does this help us?” Will asks.

“Does it even help us?” Ray asks.

“Actually, yes,” Jai says. “Once you’ve got the necessary chemicals and equipment, it’s pretty easy to produce, at least if you’re smart enough to refine the process.”

“I was wrong about Alan Perretti,” Susan says. “Knowing this, his profile changes. He’s a genius. He didn’t just skate through NYU because he only needed to graduate, he kept his grades low so he could fly under the radar, so that if someone like me were to take a look at his academic history, nothing would seem suspicious. I had NYU pull his history of library access this morning; with what he was researching, he could absolutely have pulled this off. And no one would've ever thought he could.”

“Manufacturing drugs is a big step forward from just distributing,” Will says. “This makes the Perrettis a lot more dangerous.”

“But still has nothing to do with us,” Ray says. “We can just turn all of this in to the NYPD, problem solved.”

“Wrong,” Jai says. “We were looking for a connection to Ollerman, and that’s exactly what we might find.”

“What?” Frankie says, leaning forward.

Susan looks concerned.

“Like I said, once you have the chemicals and the equipment, the drug is easy to produce. That’s why they’re selling it fairly cheap; you got fifteen pills for fifty dollars,” he says to Frankie. “It doesn’t last very long, either, which is why they sell it in that kind of quantity. But it’s getting the chemicals and the equipment that’s so difficult. Some of the stuff they’d need is only sold to medical laboratories; you can’t just purchase it on Amazon and have it delivered to your secret warehouse production facility by FedEx the next day. It has to go to a vetted facility. It’s also an incredibly expensive investment.”

“The Perrettis don’t have that kind of money,” Ray says. “They’re barely able to make their coke buys.”

“Exactly. They’d need an investor,” Susan says.

“Someone who could not only put the money into getting the operation off the ground, but also with the resources to fake credentials necessary to get that equipment,” Jai agrees.

“So you’re saying that this is where Ollerman comes in,” Will says.

“It wouldn’t have to be Ollerman himself,” Susan says, following Jai’s thought, “but potentially someone working for him.”

“Wait a second, though,” Ray says. “How do we get from this to Ollerman? I’m not following. What’s in it for him?”

“Revenue,” Frankie says. “If they can get this operation going, they’re golden. That’s why Alan asked me how I’d heard about it. They’re not just selling it in the club; they’re starting to sell it on the street, obviously, because otherwise they’re limiting their reach with potential buyers. Plus it would make it way too easy for the DEA to come down on them. If Ollerman and the Trust are involved, then they can take the drug international. Hit all the party hotspots overseas. It’s perfect. It’s cheap, it doesn’t last so they’ll have to buy more--”

“It’s highly addictive,” Jai adds.

Frankie nods. “They’ll make millions off it. It was… really nice.”

“Oh, the drug you were roofied with was ‘really nice’?” Will says.

Frankie glares at him and Jai can tell that Will’s struck a nerve. 

“I wouldn’t expect a Boy Scout to know, but yeah, that stuff is a hell of a lot better than most of what you’ll find on the club scene. Pleasant, not a lot of bad side effects, hard to OD on, and if how fucked up I was last night that fast is any indication, it’s also the perfect date rape drug,” she bites back. “They’ll make a lot of money, really fast. They just don’t have the resources or connections to do it by themselves.”

An awkward silence follows and Jai can tell Will has a lot of questions.

Frankie can too, apparently, because she snaps, “What did you think twenty year old assassins do for fun, knit?”

“Okay,” Susan says, de-escalating the argument before it can begin. “We need to establish that we’re right and that Ollerman and the Trust is involved. I agree that it makes more sense now; we know the Trust is hurting financially and is about as ready to collapse under its own weight as a house of cards, so it would make sense that Ollerman is looking for an easy revenue source, even if it’s outside his usual political machinations. I’m still worried that we’re reading connections where they don’t exist, though. This could’ve been pulled off by any number of people.”

“We need proof,” Will agrees.

“Leave me alone in a room with Lawrence Perretti and I’ll get us proof,” Frankie says dangerously.

“While that’s, you know, terrifying,” Ray says, “we can’t just blow the NYPD’s investigation. And now the DEA is going to want to get involved too.”

“So? I’ll leave him and his brother neatly tied up with a bow on top and everything, just for them.” Frankie smiles at the thought. “We all win.”

Ray opens his mouth, then shuts it.

“She’s not wrong,” Will says carefully, looking at Frankie with mild concern. “If the DEA and the NYPD let us take point, we can do the hard part for them and they can have the Perrettis when we’re done. If Ollerman is involved, we crush this before it gets started.”

“Agreed,” Jai says.

Susan nods. “We still need a plan.”

“First things first,” Ray says, “let me liaise with my contact at the NYPD. We can’t just barge in and ruin years of work on this.”

“They’d get over it,” Frankie mutters.

“While you’re doing that, I want to talk to that informant who got us the job last night,” Will says. 

“I’ll keep digging into how they obtained the chemicals and the equipment,” Jai says. 

“I’ll reevaluate my profiles,” Susan says, a little bitterly. 

Will looks at Frankie. “Are you coming with me?”

Jai can tell it’s an honest question, one Will doesn’t seem to even want to ask. He isn’t sure if it’s because he doesn’t want to spend the day with Frankie after what happened last night or if he’s afraid of her answer.

“Yeah,” she says. 

Will looks back at Ray. “See if you can get the NYPD to get us a meeting with that informant.”

“On it,” Ray says, holding up his phone.


	17. Chapter 17

Standish blinks up at the ceiling lights. 

“Hi baby,” Farah says, setting on the edge of his bed, moving a slow hand over his forehead.

“Mom?”

“Yeah baby,” she says with a smile. “Do you know where you are?”

He looks around, moves a bit on the bed, freezes at the feeling of the blankets against his legs. “Where are my pants?”

“What?”

“My pants, what happened to my pants?”

Farah laughs. “They were ruined.”

“What about my BTS t-shirt?”

“I’m sorry,” Farah says, a hand on his forehead again. “It was ruined.”

“I got that backstage!” he mutters.

“Do you remember what happened?”

Standish thinks for a moment. He remembers calling Will. He remembers Ollerman’s voice in his ear. He looks at his mom. “Yes.” She waits a moment like she’s expecting him to elaborate. “I can’t tell you.”

She looks like she expected that answer. “Do you know who did this to you?”

“Yes. Where’s-- where’s my team? Are they here? Can I see them?”

“They’re not here,” Farah says. “They’re out trying to catch him. There’s two FBI agents in the hallway, though.”

“Trying-- they-- they know who attacked me?”

Farah nods. “Ray said that it was on the voicemail you left Will.”

“You talked to Ray?” Standish asks. Farah nods. “I’m so sorry that you had to.”

Farah laughs. “He’s kind.”

“He’s an idiot,” Standish says like he thinks it’s vital that she know this.

“Yes, but he’s kind. What have I always told you about being kind?” she says, her tone gentle but chastising. 

“That it’s more important than being smart,” Standish mutters. As drugged as he is he can still recall that; she’s drilled it into him since he was little.

“Exactly.” Farah kisses his forehead. Normally he’d shoo her away or dodge it entirely, but right now having his mom beside him is the only thing making him feel any semblance of okay.

He feels like he’s starting to fall asleep again. “Will you still be here when I wake up?”

Farah smiles. “Of course I will.”

**

Chuck Lansing is standing by the corner of the warehouse, smoking a cigarette. “Can I help you?” he asks, voice as rough as his face is lined. Will remembers him from last night.

“I hope so,” Will says. He looks around.

“Next truck won’t be here for ten minutes,” Chuck says. “Everybody's on break. Talk now before you lose your chance.” Frankie crosses her arms beside Will and Chuck looks at her. “I saw you come in last night. Didn’t see you leave, though. Glad you’re okay.”

Frankie nods.

“No thanks to the Perretti brothers,” Will says stiffly.

Something hardens in Chuck’s face. “They’re scum. Both of them and their father.”

“Why do you work for them, then?” Frankie asks.

“Sons of bitches killed my brother,” Chuck says. He gestures with his cigarette toward the warehouse. “I’ve got nothing. Just this dead end job. So I got in with the Perrettis after my brother died, worked my way up until I’m the one scouting out mayfly bouncers for them.” He takes a drag off his cigarette. “I help the NYPD get cops in, when I can. One day I’m going to find out enough to put them in prison for the rest of their miserable lives. If it means I have to testify and end up in prison with them, well, I’ll enjoy watching some big dude named Smalls make them his bitch before I’m shivved in the shower by someone who didn’t get the memo that their cartel is toast.”

“Um… okay,” Will says, a bit taken aback, “but we have an easier way.”

Chuck looks at him. “I’m listening.”

“We have bigger problems than the Perettis, but we need them to get to the people we’re after,” Frankie says. “We need to find out where all three of the Perrettis will be, together, somewhere with minimal security, and without a crowd.”

“So not the club.”

“No,” Will says, “not the club.”

“The accountant works at the clubs some nights, but they’re not usually all together; that’s just his time to do the books,” Chuck says, considering it. “But they meet with him twice a week. Every Monday and Thursday.”

Will and Frankie look at each other. It’s Thursday.

“Where?” Will asks.

“And what time?” Frankie asks.

Chuck smiles.

**

“I confirmed Lansing’s story,” Susan says when they’re back in the truck. “His brother was murdered four years ago. He came to the NYPD shortly after, trying to incriminate the Perrettis, but there was insufficient evidence to make an arrest. He checks out.”

“Okay,” Will says, “here’s the plan. When the Perrettis meet with Pelletier, it’s a closed meeting between Jack Perretti and Pelletier first. Then all three Perrettis meet after Pelletier leaves. We’re going to hit the weakest link. While Jack is dealing with Pelletier, we’ll catch Alan and Lawrence.”

“Alan isn’t your weakest link,” Susan says.

“No,” Frankie agrees, “Lawrence is.”

“The NYPD and DEA will be ready to move,” Ray says.

“Only on our signal,” Will says.

“If they move before we can get the info from the brothers, they’ll either try to cut a plea deal or stay loyal to Ollerman so they won’t get killed,” Frankie says. “We need them thinking I’ll kill them if they don’t flip.”

“But, you won’t, right?” Ray asks. “Because the NYPD would be _pissed_.”

Frankie shrugs. 

“Frankie?” Ray asks at the silence on the coms.

“She won’t,” Will says. He looks at Frankie. “You won’t.” She makes a face like she’s still considering. “We’re on our way over. Jai, can you hack into the building and get the security feeds remotely?

“Already done. The building is being renovated, which is why the Perrettis use it; it’s empty. There are barely even any firewalls in place. It took me, like, two seconds.”

“Next question, then, can you get us into the building?” Frankie asks. 

“Of course I can; who do you think I am? Just because Standish is a better hacker doesn’t mean I’m incompetent.”

Frankie smiles.

“Way better hacker,” Ray mutters.

Jai ignores him. “I’ll guide you to a door, unlock it for you, then tell you where and when to get the drop on the brothers. Good enough?”

“Perfect,” Frankie says.

Will parks the SUV behind the building. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“There’s an emergency exit right near the parking lot,” Jai says. “Do you see it?”

“Yeah,” Frankie says.

“Okay. It’s unlocked. Go in through there; it opens into a stairwell.”

Will follows just off Frankie’s shoulder as they climb the stairs.

“Fifth floor,” Jai says. Frankie pushes open the door. “The Perretti brothers are behind the fourth door on the right. DEA and NYPD are ten minutes out. Have fun.”

Will watches Frankie as she stops in front of the door. Both of them draw their pistols. 

“All yours,” he says softly.

Frankie smiles, but it isn't nice. 

She opens the door; the brothers are sitting at a conference table, facing away from them. Frankie goes for Lawrence, on her left, while Will goes for Alan. Lawrence turns in his chair, too surprised to draw a weapon to defend himself. 

“Remember me?” Frankie asks. She lands a kick to Lawrence's chest that knocks him over backwards in his chair. He rolls to his side and puts his hands down to get up but Frankie pulls his arm into a lock behind his back, pinning him to the ground with her knee pressing into his spine. "If you move, I'll break your arm."

She doesn't look up as Will zipties Alan's wrists and shoves him into one of the chairs. She trusts him, even now. 

"I have a few questions for you," Frankie growls, pulling Lawrence's arms tighter across his back as he squirms. "If you answer all of them, maybe I'll be nice and only break your fingers."

"You be nice?" Will says. "Not likely."

It's a ploy, of course, to get Lawrence to believe her, but it comes out a little heavier than he meant it to.

Beside him, Alan shifts. Will looks back to him, pistol still aimed at his head. "Yell and you're dead," he warns. Alan just looks evenly at him. 

Lawrence groans into the carpet. Will can tell Frankie isn't feeling too charitable towards him; his shoulder is in some considerable danger of being dislocated. “I have two questions for you. I want both answered. Who tipped you off that I was in the club?”

Lawrence huffs a laugh against the floor.

Frankie wrenches his arm a little further and he yelps. “Who tipped you off that I was in the club?” she growls.

“Don’t say anything to this bitch,” Alan snaps. 

Will feels that anger he’s been tamping down every day since they got the phone call in Prague come surging to the surface. It’s not that he’s mad Alan called Frankie a bitch, not really. He’s sure as hell heard her called a lot worse. It rankles him, though, for some reason, sticking little barbs beneath his skin and lodging itself there. 

“Take him outside,” Frankie says.

Will doesn’t like the edge in her voice. 

He turns his head to look at her; Alan surges to his feet. Will steps out of the way and brings his pistol up, hitting Alan in the temple with the butt of it hard enough to send him crashing to the floor. Will leaves him in the heap he falls in. 

"You should cooperate," Will says to Lawrence, who with his head turned got a clear view of his brother's failed attempt at taking control of the situation. 

Lawrence looks irritated, but not frightened. Will wouldn't expect much different. 

"Guys," Susan says, "play off his brother. He's ten years older than Alan; he took care of him when they were kids."

Will squats down beside Lawrence. "Listen," he says mildly. "I have one very specific request. And my friend Lorelai, here, is a little upset about what happened last night." Will is pretty sure he's more angry about it than Frankie is, but he ignores that fact. "I'll make you a deal. If you tell us how you knew we were coming, she won't kill your brother."

Lawrence huffs in irritation.

Frankie breaks his pinky finger. 

She shoves his face into the carpet as he yelps. Will feels no sympathy for him. 

"Tell me who tipped you off," Frankie growls. 

When Lawrence doesn't answer, she breaks his ring finger. Will feels guilt creep heavily up his throat but then he remembers Standish and the guilt is washed away again by a sweeping tide of anger. 

Frankie releases her brutal lock on Lawrence's arm and yanks a ziptie tight around his wrists. She stands. 

"What are you doing?" he asks, suddenly nervous. 

Frankie doesn't answer him. He rolls onto his side and watches her approach Alan. 

"Look," Will says. "I get that you want to protect your business. I do. But at the expense of your brother's life?" He blows out a breath. "That's a steep price to pay. And after you took care of him for so long."

"She won't--" Lawrence starts. Frankie looks back at him and the words seem to die in his mouth. 

Will frowns. "She will."

Frankie pulls the pistol free of her holster again and Lawrence squirms on the floor. "Make her stop!"

"I've never been able to make her do anything," Will says, "nevermind stop her."

"Jesus," Lawrence says, "fine. Our boss called my dad, told him you might show up. So he was watching on the cameras while I worked the floor; he recognized her," he says, jerking his head toward Frankie. "He called me and I slipped glitter in her drink."

"Who's your boss?" Frankie demands. 

"Bill Lannister."

"Am I supposed to know who that is?" Will says, looking from Lawrence to Frankie. 

"No," Lawrence says irritably. "None of us knew he even existed until a few months ago. Found out about baby bro's new drug, offered us a deal. We do as he says, he finances, we get rich. You don't say no to a deal like that."

"How did he find out about the drug? Alan didn't start producing it until he was out of NYU," Will says. 

"Jesus, don't call him Alan. Our grandad was Alan, for fuck's sake," Lawrence gripes. "I don't know how he found out about it. He works for some company or whatever; said word made it through the grapevine."

Frankie takes a step forward. "What company?"

"I don't know what it's called," Lawrence scoffs. "Don't really care. Some trust or something."

Frankie's eyes flick up to Will. "Was Lannister the only one you ever spoke to?" Will asks.

"Yeah. He usually spoke with our dad; he keeps us involved but keeps the controlling aspects of the business close to his chest. Safer for him that way," he spits. 

Will tilts his head from side to side to express his consideration of that. "Makes sense," he admits. 

Lawrence sits up. "Me telling you this doesn't mean shit. You'll never get to Lannister or whoever the hell his boss is."

"We're resourceful," Frankie says. Lawrence looks up at her and she punches him in the face, sending him sprawling sideways onto the floor. 

"Was that really necessary?" Ray says through the coms. 

"I'll roofie you and see if you don't want to get even," Frankie snaps. 

That shuts Ray up pretty effectively.

“Time for us to go, then,” Will says. “Come on. We’ll get clear of the building and then the NYPD and DEA can have them.”

Frankie takes one more look at Lawrence with an expression Will doesn’t understand and follows him out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We don't have many more chapters to go... in this story.


	18. Chapter 18

Jai settles in the chair across from where Frankie is sitting, reviewing footage of Lannister’s security detail taken in London last month.

“How are you feeling?” he asks. The rest of the team is in the other room, but he keeps his voice soft anyway.

“Fine,” she says without looking up.

“I don’t mean after last night. I mean that I-- I know you wanted to kill Perretti. I know you would’ve if Will wasn’t there.” That gets her attention and she looks up at him, lips pressed tight. She doesn’t at all like where this is going. “I know last night probably brought up a lot of… memories, of Fiona, and I-- I wanted to make sure that you’re okay.”

Her jaw drops a little. For Jai to start a conversation like this is serious enough; he must be taking his worry about Standish and directing it somewhere he can actually try to address it, whether deliberately or not. But for him to even mention Fiona crosses a line they’d established so long ago she hasn’t even thought about it since. Unlike Fiona, who she very carefully blocks from her mind every time the memory of her rises unbidden.

“We’re not talking about this,” she says stiffly.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he concedes, “but I thought you might need to.” 

She studies him for a moment. “Why would I ever want to talk about it. She’s been dead for more than ten years, Jai. Marco’s dead too. I killed him myself and any answers died with him.” She looks back at the report. Jai just hums. The skepticism in the sound is too much for her. “Just back off,” she spits. When Jai says nothing she shoves her chair back and walks out of the bar.

She’s fended off every thought of Fiona today with the force of swinging a baseball bat but now that Jai’s brought her up Frankie just can’t seem to bury her so easily. She walks into the alley behind the bar; there’s an unused dumpster there that she’s always assumed belongs to them, but since the bar isn’t really a bar, it sits untouched. Except for Leo, laying on top on the sun-warmed plastic where she usually is. Leo gets up and moves warily to the other lid, but inches forward when Frankie holds her fingers out until she’s rubbing her face against them. She sniffs Frankie’s fingers and then licks one of them with her rough tongue.

“You’re so gross,” Frankie tells the cat. Leo rubs her face against Frankie’s hand again until she scratches her chin.

She hears footsteps around the corner and knows by the gait that it’s Will. Leo jumps down off the dumpster and hisses at him. Will squats down and holds his hand out, making a kissy noise at the cat until she approaches warily. He holds his hand still until Leo is rubbing her face on his fingers, begging for a scratch. 

“I always knew you were a Disney princess,” Frankie says drily. “What do you want?”

Will looks up at her from where he’s still petting the cat. “What’s her name?”

“She doesn’t have one.”

He smiles a little. “Sure she does.”

“Leo,” Frankie snaps.

“Leo,” Will croons, scratching behind her ears.

“What do you want?” Frankie asks, impatient.

“I bet she feeds you,” Will says to Leo.

“If I feed her she won’t stay self-sufficient,” Frankie says stiffly. 

“Aw, tough love,” Will croons. Leo throws herself on the ground and stretches out, rolling so her belly is exposed. 

“She bites,” Frankie warns, taking a step forward.

“Oh, I know better,” he says, continuing to scratch Leo’s chin and not falling for the trap.

“What do you want, Will.”

He looks up at her from where he’s crouched on the ground, green eyes bright in the sunlight. “Just wanted to make sure you’re okay.” She studies him for a moment. He seems like himself again, the weight that’s been clinging to him like smoke since the club having dispersed. Now he just looks tired. 

“I’m fine.”

“You and Jai don’t fight much.”

“No,” she agrees warily. 

“I just figured it must’ve been something pretty bad for you to walk out like that.”

“It’s none of your business,” she snaps.

Will stands. Leo gets up and throws herself onto her back at his feet. Frankie glares at the little tortoiseshell traitor. “You and me,” Will says, “are partners. No matter what else is going on, I’m here for you. That’s how this works.”

He’s so honest and so kind that she almost wants to tell him. About the girl she loved when she was twenty and lost. The girl who ran away from home at eighteen to escape her stepdad’s abuse. Frankie hadn’t spoken much Italian yet at that point and Fiona had barely spoken English, but it was enough to get by. She almost wants to tell Will about how she had found herself stuck with Marco, how they were always on and off but it was never love, how she owed him too much to leave. About dragging herself out of bed, still a little drunk, to find the police at the door, then the blur of the investigation and the tox screen and sinking feeling that she knew exactly who had drugged Fiona at that party and murdered her when she was defenseless, even if the police had no leads. About how Frankie had really taught herself to spy.

The fact that she almost wants to tell Will is exactly why she can’t.

“I don’t need you,” she says bluntly.

Something like disappointment breaks across Will’s face and she knows he’s showing it deliberately. “No,” he says. “I know you don’t need me. But you said in Prague that you wanted me. I was hoping that was still true.” Everything in her tells her to run. “I know you’re scared, but--”

“I’m not scared,” she interrupts. Terrified is probably more accurate. Terrified of him and the way he makes her feel.

“I just think we should talk about this,” Will says, innocent like sunlight. “We can do this; I know we can.”

“You said you came out here to check on me and then you start with this bullshit again?” Frankie snaps. “You and I both know why we _can’t_ do this. Either we acknowledge that and stop now or we let this blow up in our faces later.”

“Then you’re not denying that you want this,” he says.

She reconsiders her words and realizes that she’s talked herself in a circle. “I don’t. But I know that you do.”

He nods. “That’s not exactly news,” he says. 

“You must know this is a bad idea, though,” she insists. It sounds something like a plea to her; she hopes it doesn’t sound like that to him. His eyes soften, though, and she knows it did.

“It’s not,” Will says with something that sounds like a laugh of disbelief. “It’s not a bad idea. You and me? We’re good together.”

Susan’s voice echoes the same sentiment in Frankie’s head. “As partners,” she corrects. “When we first got this assignment, you kept going on and on about all that family crap. Maybe you were right--” Will smiles, “-- _maybe_ , but if you were isn‘t that just more reason that this is impossible? We can’t do this. We can’t upset that balance.”

Will narrows his eyes. “That sounds more like Jai than you.”

“Even if it is, he’s right,” she spits. Leo winds herself around their ankles.

Will shakes his head. “Frankie--”

“No,” she says. “There’s nothing else to say.”

Will takes a step forward and Leo meows as his foot cuts in front of her. Frankie wants to step away from him but she’s caught in place by the way he’s looking at her. Like it’s a dare for her to stay. Like he thinks she’s something precious. Then his hands are cupping her face and he’s kissing her. She gasps through her nose in surprise because she really hadn’t expected this from him. She tilts her head back and he lets her go.

“Yeah,” he says, like he’s agreeing with himself. “When you’re done lying to yourself, you know where to find me.”

He walks past her without a word, disappearing from sight as he turns the corner around the side of The Dead Drop. Frankie watches him go, dumbstruck. He tasted like coffee. 

Leo meows and Frankie looks down at her. “Did I ask your opinion?” Leo meows again. “Yeah, you and everybody else.”


	19. Chapter 19

Once Frankie walks back in the bar, Will waits a few minutes before gathering everyone together. Whatever issues he and Frankie are having can wait. He’s more sure than ever now that he’ll be able to convince her to at the very least try to make a relationship work. And if they try, he’s sure they can do it.

“Okay,” he finally says, “let’s plan the play.”

Susan nods. “Hey Frankie,” she calls. Frankie looks up from the table she’s been working at. “Jai?” Susan asks.

“Coming,” he says, out of sight.

Frankie sets the files on the pool table. She traces a scratch on the baize. 

“I know,” Ray says in response to the action, “figures.”

“It’s not like it would affect your game any,” Jai says with a smug smile as he joins them.

“Hah hah,” is Ray’s sarcastic response.

“Okay,” Will says, reigning it in. “Ray?”

“Bill Lannister,” Ray says, “from England, but moved to New York and started out as a stock broker. Real rags to riches story, except along the way he went from honest businessman to crooked crime lord. Started using his connections to finance all kinds of illegal operations, mostly in Europe.”

“There’s no obvious connection between Lannister and Ollerman,” Will says.

“But Lannister is definitely the type of person Ollerman would find value in as part of the organization,” Susan says. “Smart, resourceful, an expert in generating funds that could be used to support any number of the Trust’s endeavors.”

“Actually,” Jai says, “we can link Ollerman and Lannister. Not directly, but.” He turns his tablet to face them, displaying security camera footage, clear enough even in black and white. “A nice little cafe with a late morning brunch between two very bad men. That’s Lannister, and that’s--”

“Henri Griffin,” Will says flatly. It’s dread, mostly, that he feels. He knows Griffin is dead. They may have been wrong about Ollerman, but Will watched Griffin die when Susan shot him. There was no faking that. Emma’s gone now and although Will misses her and still mourns the fact that she lost every possibility inherent in life, there’s no holding onto the dead. Instead, the dread is bitter in his throat from the scars left by his desperate chase for Griffin. A scar Frankie bears quite literally in the shape of a flame on her palm from the burn left by the lighter she’d caught when she’d pulled him back from the precipice of losing himself.

Will feels Frankie and Susan both watching him. Jai just nods. "The footage is from last year, taken in Berlin."

"Griffin was Ollerman's right hand guy," Ray says. "If he's meeting with Lannister, then it's not just some casual relationship between Lannister and the Trust."

Frankie frowns. "I don't think Lannister necessarily has the prerequisite skill sets to take Griffin's place, but if he was managing the Perrettis then maybe he's reporting directly to Ollerman. And if not, we can use him to find the intermediary."

Will nods. "So how do we find him?"

There's a beat of silence between everyone before Frankie shakes her head. "He doesn't hire private security. It's mostly the same two guys that he's seen with. Ex-military, probably, but Europol only has an ID on one of them, Terry Brimmer."

"That gives us more people to track, though," Jai says. Frankie nods in agreement. "I'll load them into Standish's program and see if we can't find them." 

"Lannister doesn't do anything as simple as trading stocks anymore, so we don't have a way of anticipating where he'll be until we can establish a pattern," Susan says. "His profile suggests an enjoyment of betting and gambling, but that doesn't really narrow it down much for us."

"Helpful later, though, maybe," Frankie says. She's got that predatory look on her face that used to scare Will a little. Now it just worries him, slightly, in the sense that he knows it can make her unpredictable and he worries that it might. 

"This, uh, this didn't get us very far," Ray says slowly. 

There's a slow beat of silence. "Maybe not closer to action," Will says, "but this is progress!" Everyone is silent, watching him. 

"He's right," Frankie says. Will looks at her in surprise. "Look, none of us like sitting around when we feel like we can be doing more. As soon as we find something that tells us where to go, we can take Lannister down."

There's another beat of silence before everyone nods. Frankie doesn't say anything as everyone disperses. She picks up the files and when she looks up to see Will beaming at her she squints warily. "What," she says flatly.

"Nothing, I just… I'm so proud of you," he says. 

"Don't cry; it makes you less attractive."

"You and I both know that's not true," he says. 

"Yes it is," she gripes.

Will watches her go with a smile. "No it's not," he says to himself. 

**

There's a knock on the door and Jai checks the security feed before he jumps down off his stool. "Frankie!" he says. She jerks in her seat where she was half asleep still reviewing details on Lannister's security team. "Help me with this!" 

She follows him slowly to the door. Two FedEx men holding a large box between them peer cautiously in when Jai opens the door. 

"Uh, wow," one of them says. "What, uh, what happened here?"

"Bar fight," Frankie says. 

"Oh," the man says. "I didn't think this place was open."

"It's not," Frankie says curtly. 

"Oh...kay," the man says. He puts the device on top of the box for Jai to sign. 

Jai signs with a flourish and the FedEx man clips it back to his belt. Frankie helps Jai take the weight of the box. 

"Have a good day," the other man says uneasily as he sweeps the destroyed bar with his eyes again before the doors close. 

"What is this?" Frankie says. 

"It's our coffee maker," Jai says, like it's obvious. 

"It's a little heavy for a Mr. Coffee."

"It's not-- do you honestly think I'd buy us a Mr. Coffee?"

Frankie smiles. "No."

She helps him carry it around the bar and set it where he cleared away the remnants of their old one. They lift it out of the box and Jai pulls the styrofoam away. Frankie studies it.

“I think this cost more than my rent,” she says.

Jai smiles. “Beautiful, isn’t she.” Frankie just chuckles. 

Ray moves around the side of the bar to look at the machine. “Holy shit!” Jai nods. "You used our government funding for this?"

"Um… yes."

"That's awesome," Ray laughs, holding his hand out for a fist bump. Jai begrudgingly obliges. 

“That’s… wow,” Will says. “That’s--”

“A whole new level of caffeinated beverage,” Jai finishes. 

“I’m not helping you write that off in your expense report,” Susan says to Ray as she leans against the bar beside him.

“No need. Team morale, right?” Ray says enthusiastically. Susan just looks at him. 

“You’ll change your mind when you try it,” Jai says. 

“Uh-huh,” Susan says.

Jai fishes the manual out of the box. As he pulls it free it unfolds from the neat accordion it had been folded into until the bottom of the booklet hits the floor. 

“Oh,” Frankie says.

Will claps Jai on the back as he passes. “Yeah,” he says, “good luck with that.”

Jai scoffs derisively. “I have two degrees in engineering. I’m a _genius_. I can figure out a coffee maker.”

“Okey,” Frankie says, grimacing and following Will.

“Sure, Jai,” Jai mutters to himself, “we trust you, Jai; a coffee maker is no match for you, Jai.”

Everyone makes themselves scarce, leaving Jai alone with the coffee maker while Standish’s program runs on his tablet.


	20. Chapter 20

"Jai," Ray says. "Jai!" He points repeatedly and enthusiastically at the screen of the tablet. Jai turns, finally, a piece of the coffee machine in his hand. Jai sees what Ray's pointing at and unceremoniously dumps the piece of metal on the bar and drops the manual straight to the floor. It flutters as it folds back into the accordion again. 

"It got a hit," Jai says slowly as he clicks through the info. 

"Hey you guys!" Ray shouts. 

Will jerks into a sitting position from the booth he'd been laying in, taking a power nap. Susan sits up from where she'd fallen asleep with her arms crossed on the table. Ray looks at both of them and then jumps when he notices Frankie suddenly beside him.

"Jai's got something," he says to redirect her attention. They may have been teammates for months now and he's pretty sure at this point that he can trust her with everyone else's lives, but he's still not sure he can trust her with his. That makes him uneasy. 

Also, she's terrifying. 

Frankie looks away from Ray and fixes her attention on Jai instead. 

“Standish’s program just got a hit on Terry Brimmer,” Jai says.

Frankie gets closer to look over Jai’s shoulder at the screen of his tablet. 

“Where?” Will asks.

“On a traffic cam outside of…” Jai pauses as he evaluates the area.

Susan points to the screen, cutting Jai off. “They’re headed for the airfield,” she says stiffly. Everyone crowds closer. “There’s nothing else over there, unless they’re headed to 7/11.”

“I doubt they’re getting slushies,” Ray agrees.

“We need to stop Lannister from getting on that plane,” Will says.

“Is Ollerman with them?” Frankie asks.

Jai frowns. “I don’t know. The camera only saw Brimmer and the driver, who I’m trying to ID. I can try to alter the traffic grid to slow them down, but, I mean, that’s more Standish’s job.”

Will nods. “Let’s go,” he says.

Frankie nods in response.

“I’ll coordinate with the NYPD and FBI to get a SWAT team out there with you. We’ll shut down the airfield,” Ray says. Frankie follows Will out the door and Ray can’t push away the bad feeling he has settling into his gut. “Do you think Ollerman is there?” he asks Susan, voice low even though he’s standing right next to Jai and knows he can hear. The coms aren’t live yet.

“Yeah,” Susan says slowly. “I think he will be. Everything we’ve seen points to his involvement, as much as I doubted it at first. I think they’ll find him.”

Ray nods and reaches for his phone to call his contacts at the FBI before he calls the NYPD as well. He wonders if he should’ve gone with Frankie and Will.

**

The airfield is small, not big enough to support commercial traffic but rather only private flights on small aircraft. It’s sterilely beautiful with white walls, abstract light fixtures hanging from the ceiling, tiled floors polished into a disorienting shine. There’s a painfully overpriced coffee shop, a few lounges, and not much else. Frankie follows Will through the building, surveying the people milling about.

“Lannister is at the far end,” Jai says through the coms. “The plane is fueled and ready to go. I have a program working through the video surveillance in the building to see anyone who might have already boarded.”

“Like Ollerman,” Will says softly, but with an edge Frankie still hasn’t become accustomed to after these past few days. 

They turn the corner where the building bends and Frankie nudges Will. “There’s Brimmer,” she says. He’s standing by the door that leads out onto the tarmac, in front of a wall of windows looking out at the crews prepping the planes. Standing with him, she realizes as he turns, is Lannister. Barely a moment after she spots them, Brimmer makes eye contact with her. He pushes Lannister behind him and Will’s hand fists in Frankie’s jacket, hauling her behind one of the square pillars supporting the ceiling as Brimmer raises the weapon concealed under his jacket and opens fire. Will presses her against the column with his chest against her back as people scream in the terminal. The delicate tiling climbing the pillar shatters under the impact of the bullets.

“Brimmer made us,” he says to the rest of the team. “Lannister’s with him.”

“We’ve got eyes on you,” Jai says, “we see him.”

“Cover me,” Frankie says, looking back over her shoulder at Will. He looks torn, like he knows he should but like he doesn’t want to let her go. It makes something like anger twist dangerously in her chest. 

“Okay,” Will says after a beat too long. 

Frankie slips away from him at the same time he leans out from the other side of the pillar, firing on Brimmer. She takes cover behind the wall where the hallway to the pilot’s lounge is just slightly recessed from the main hall of the terminals. It doesn’t afford her much cover but it’s enough from where Will now has Brimmer pinned behind the desk by the door, Lannister still with him.

“SWAT is six minutes out,” Ray says. “Keep them pinned until then.”

For a split second Frankie considers that the task won’t be that hard. She and Will both trade fire with Brimmer. Then she realizes that she's jinxed herself. Out of the corner of her eye she spots movement behind Will and turns her head to look. The driver they’ve yet to ID has opened the door to an access hallway, right in Will’s blindspot. He takes a step forward, holding the door so it doesn’t make a sound as it shuts, and Frankie sees the pistol in his hand. 

“Will!” she shouts and he looks toward her. “Behind you!”

He turns to see the driver and fires on him before he can get a shot off. The man ducks behind the door again, using it as a shield. Brimmer stands from behind the desk and Frankie can see that he has a clear shot at Will. She fires off a few more shots and then her magazine clicks empty. Will ducks behind the pillar again and Brimmer lunges forward. Frankie breaks her cover behind the wall and slams into Brimmer hard enough that she sends both of them to the ground. She’s tall but Brimmer is more of a solid brick wall than a man and the amount of force it takes to tackle him knocks the breath out of her as she hits the tiled floor with him.

She forces her palms to the tile and her arms to push her up even as she tries to suck a breath in. Brimmer gets his bearings before her and as she staggers to her feet he lands a punch to her jaw that sends her straight back to the floor. Blood fills her mouth from where her teeth have cut into her cheek. 

She gets up again because instinct and experience will never let her stay down. 

A shot rings out and Frankie lurches towards Will with a reaction that defies instinct and experience.

“Frankie!” Jai yells in her ear. 

Brimmer grabs her, pulling her back towards him. She elbows him in the throat; he lands a punch to her ribs that she’s too close to dodge, but she’s also too close for him to muster enough force for it to break anything. Knocks the breath out of her, though. She brings her knee up as hard as she can manage straight to his groin and hears the answering grunt echoed by an “ooh” from Ray, Susan, and Jai over the coms. Brimmer uses the momentum he has in doubling over to hook an arm around Frankie’s neck, pulling her sideways and taking a step forward to force her to turn so that her back is against his chest. His arm is like a tree trunk and she finds herself struggling against him, unable to see the pillar Will was hiding behind to know if he’s okay. 

Frankie lands an elbow to his ribs but he doesn’t budge. She does it again to the same lack of effect. She slams the heel of her boot onto his foot but when he grunts in response he just tightens his grip around her throat. She has a knife in her pocket but it’s trapped between her back and Brimmer’s stomach. There’s another in her boot but she can’t reach that either. 

She can hear her blood rushing in her ears with every beat of her heart, blocking out even the wheezing of her breath and the sound of Jai yelling through the coms as she tries to breathe through the pressure. 

A wave of black rushes over her before she even hits the floor.

**

The shot the driver fires misses Will and buries itself in the wall instead. 

“Frankie!” Jai yells.

Will lunges forward and grabs the door handle, pulling it forward and then slamming it back into the driver’s face. He’s learned that sometimes thinking like Frankie is an asset. The driver flinches violently and Will uses the distraction to punch the hand holding the pistol, knocking the weapon free of the man’s hand. He swings at Will’s face but Will blocks the wild punch. He swings again and catches Will in the side, knuckles sharp against the muscles over his ribs. Will trades a few more blows with the driver and feels more like he’s sparring like they did in boot camp than like he’s brawling the way he usually feels when he’s training with Frankie.

“Will,” Jai snaps, “Lannister’s getting away. He and Brimmer are out the door!”

“SWAT is two minutes out,” Ray says. 

The driver pivots to the side; Will takes a step in the opposite direction and slams the door into the driver’s face again. It wubbles as it bounces off him and the man hits the floor. Will pivots away and only registers that Jai was specifically talking to him when he sees Frankie laid out in a graceless heap on the floor. He skids to a stop on the tile and presses his fingers to her throat. His fear is a physical feeling, a cold sensation pouring from his face down into his gut. Her heart is beating, quick and steady. He feels almost sick with relief.

“Whiskey!” Ray snaps. “Lannister and Brimmer are almost at the plane.”

Will hesitates. He hesitates just enough to realize that he’s hesitated and then he looks from Frankie to the driver, still crumpled on the floor, and back again. He runs out onto the tarmac after Lannister and Brimmer. 

“Stop!” he yells. “FBI!”

Brimmer shoves Lannister in front of him and raises the weapon again to fire on Will. He ducks behind one of the small carts that the airport workers use to travel around the tarmac. Brimmer stops firing and Will looks up to see Lannister and Brimmer both boarding the small, waiting plane. Will rushes out from cover and runs toward the plane.

“Don’t fire!” Jai barks into the coms.

“What?!” Will asks in disbelief. “Why?!”

“If you hit the fuel tank you risk igniting the fuel. A fire is one thing, but if it were to detonate it could injure a lot of people in the airport. And you’d, you know, definitely die. So would Frankie and anyone else on that end of the building.”

Will lowers his weapon and looks around even as the plane begins to taxi away. “What about that?” he says, looking at the cart and trusting that Jai still has eyes on him.

The door behind him slams open and Frankie joins him.

“Only if you want to trail embarrassingly behind them,” Jai says. “There’s a truck around the side of the building to your right.”

Frankie taps Will’s arm in an unspoken “let’s go” and they run toward the truck. As promised, it’s just around the slight jut of the building, hidden from sight where they’d been standing. Will beats Frankie to it and slides into the driver's seat. He checks the visor for the keys but finds none. Frankie’s door slams shut. He uses his knife to pry the cover off the underside of the steering wheel. 

“Let me do that,” she snaps as he reaches for the wires. Her voice is hoarse and he finally realizes that Brimmer must have choked her out to get the upper hand. She shoves his fingers out of the way and pulls a wire out of the mess; she strips it with a knife without warning and Will presses himself back into the seat.

“Frankie!” he yelps as the knife comes startlingly close to where the knife should absolutely not be coming close to or generally anywhere near.

“Relax,” she grouses. She taps the exposed wires together and the engine turns over. She does it again and it starts. “Go!” she snaps.

Will shifts the truck into gear and peels out as he floors it to gain on the taxiing plane. 

“Go faster!” Frankie insists.

“Do you want to drive?”

“If you’re going to drive like this, then yes!”

“You always want to drive,” Will mutters.

“Because I’m a better driver!”

“No you’re not.”

“Uh, yeah I am.” The plane is pulling away from them as the pitch of the engine raises. “Go faster!” she insists again.

“It doesn’t go any faster!”

Frankie huffs in frustration beside him.

“Damn it,” Will snaps as the plane draws away from them. He lets the truck slow, knowing they're beat. 

“No!” Frankie shouts.

“ _Damn it_!” He slams his hands against the steering wheel in frustration more intense than he usually feels. 

“SWAT is on site,” Ray says dejectedly through the coms. “They have the driver in custody.”

“Okay,” Will says, “okay.” Frankie is silent beside him, watching the plane as it rises slowly away from the ground. “We’ll rendezvous with SWAT and see the driver into FBI custody.” He turns the truck around. “Is there any progress on IDing the driver?”

“Not yet,” Susan says.

“Focus on military records. He fought like he was trained.” 

“Okay,” she says. 

Will shifts the truck into park and untangles the wires Frankie had twisted together with a rough yank. She’s been silent the whole ride back to the building. He looks at her and she looks back at him. There’s something warring in her expression that takes him a moment to place as anger and guilt. He just doesn't really understand why.

Frankie gets out of the truck and Will follows her back into the building.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where we start tying up the plot for this fic, but the series continues on from here. There's only a couple more chapters to go.


	21. Chapter 21

Jai is so focused on the video he’s reviewing that Frankie genuinely startles him when she says, “I want the footage from the airport.” He jumps on the stool he's been sitting on since before she and Will had left. His back tightens angrily in response to the sudden movement.

“Why?”

“You know why.”

Jai studies her for a moment. People have always been a mystery to him, complicated machines that no degree in engineering or any amount of genius could help him understand. Frankie, though, he understands like simple physics. He’s seen her at her best and her worst and everything in between. Outwardly her face is mostly impassive, but he can read the plea anyway. 

He pulls up the footage and lets her watch from when she and Will had first found Brimmer and Lannister in the airport through when she’d woken up and run out onto the tarmac after Will. She reaches out and plays it back to when she'd tackled Brimmer. When she reaches the part where he dumps her carelessly on the floor, she plays it back to the same spot again. She watches it three times.

“Frankie,” Jai says. He’s not really sure what he intended to say after. 

“He was fine, wasn’t he,” she says with the sound of a rhetorical question. “When Brimmer rushed him. He had time to react. He would've been fine. I overreacted.”

Jai has seen the footage as many times as she has. “Not necessarily. He was pinned. Brimmer had a better chance to kill him than the driver did. I think-- I think you saved his life.”

Frankie shakes her head and Jai realizes she’s too stubbornly fixated on this to take into account anything he’s said. “He would've been fine. I blew it.” 

Frankie shakes her head and moves away. Susan steps into her path, though, and holds out an ice pack. “Put this on your face.” Frankie just looks at it. “Sweetie, it’s pretty bad. Put this on it.”

Frankie begrudgingly takes the ice pack with a mumbled, “Thanks,” and presses it to her swollen jaw as she walks into the other room.

Susan leans on the bar with her hands firmly pressed against the edge. “She’s pretty upset about the airport,” she says. 

“I wouldn’t know,” Jai says.

“Come on, Jai. Seriously? The two of you have this whole Wonder Twins thing. Even if she didn't tell you, I know you noticed. She’s bottling all that guilt up. You know it’s not good for her.”

“It’s not,” he says stiffly, “but it is her fault. Will could’ve died, but her priority was stopping Laninster. She should've subdued him when Brimmer gave her the chance.”

“Then why did you just tell her she saved Will’s life?”

“Because I think she did. She never asked if it was her fault that Lannister got away. She asked if Will would’ve been okay. She made a choice and we all have to live with that.”

“You say that like it wouldn’t matter if Will died,” Susan snaps.

“Of course it would matter,” Jai snaps back at her, slapping his hands down on the bar but keeping his voice low enough that Frankie can’t hear him in the other room. “Of course it would matter,” he repeats. “But this is going to have consequences.” 

“I know,” Susan agrees. Jai isn’t quite sure if she means the same sort of consequences that he does, though, but he figures they’re both undoubtedly correct. 

**

Will walks into the pool room to find Frankie sitting with an ice pack pressed to her jaw. In the warm, dim light she looks like a dame from a film noir, pensive, morose, and beautiful. The comparison sells her short, he knows. She’s the furthest thing from a damsel in distress. 

She is beautiful, though, and he finds himself just as struck by her as always, even slouched miserably in her seat with an expression close to pouting, an ice pack pressed to her face that hides the swelling stretched from her jaw to her cheekbone but does nothing to hide the fat lip Brimmer’s suckerpunch gave her.

He sits beside her. “Let me see that.” 

She looks at him warily and he just raises his eyebrows and waits her out. She lowers the ice pack. Most of the bruise arches in a crescent around the corner of her mouth and the rest has settled in a line tracing her jawbone. Her lower lip is swollen toward the corner, not terribly but more than enough to be noticeable. 

“Ooh,” he says with a sympathetic wince, “yeah, put the ice pack back on it.”

Frankie rolls her eyes. “What do you want,” she says flatly.

He’s a little taken aback by her tone. “Nothing. Just to see you and make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine.”

“I know,” Will says. “You’re always fine.” He tucks some of her hair behind her ear, freeing it from where it was trapped beneath the ice pack. 

Frankie leans away from him. "Let's get something clear,” she says suddenly, “because apparently I didn’t make it clear enough.” Her tone makes his stomach drop. She takes the ice pack away from her face again. “I. Don't. Want. This," she says very deliberately, enunciating the words as clearly as she can around her swollen jaw. "When I decided to stop being such a fuck up and Jai forced me to straighten myself out, I dedicated my life to this job. This is all there is for me. _You_ are a mistake that I'm not going to make again. I put the lives of everyone on this team and everyone Ollerman is going to use in his schemes at risk because of _you_ and _that_ is not a mistake I can ever make again either. What we do is more important than either of us or both of us and we can’t _do_ this, Will.”

She has that tone that’s hard for him to understand sometimes; it’s a plea for sure, but there’s a stubbornness there that borders on petulance and for some reason that he doesn’t understand there’s a startling amount of anger.

“You keep saying that, but I’m not sure you hear yourself,” he says. 

“Me?” she says in disbelief. “I don’t hear myself? Do you hear _yourself_? You’re being clingy and demanding and we _never_ agreed on this being a relationship, because it wasn’t. This was a mess that's been in the making since Moscow and you need to just get over it!”

Will stands. “Why do you have to do this?!” he cries in disbelief. “You won’t even give it a chance! You won’t even give me a chance! Why-- why-- ugh, why won’t you just let this happen?!” 

“Because I don’t trust you not to let it compromise your work,” she hisses.

Will feels himself go very still. He’s absolutely furious because she has a very real, very unavoidable point. He’d hesitated when he found her on the floor at the airport. If he hadn’t, he might’ve stopped Lannister and Brimmer from boarding the plane. He’d spent precious time checking to make sure she was alright because he was afraid. He refuses to think of it as the wrong decision. He cares too deeply, and he especially cares too deeply about her, to think that.

“Fine,” he says. “Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow for the debrief, Frankie.” He walks out of the room and out of the bar without so much as a goodnight to Susan or Jai at the bar or Ray who he hears walking down the stairs.

He can feel their eyes on him as he leaves, though. 

**

“So,” Ray says as Susan locks the bar behind them. “Do you want, like, space or do you want me to come over?”

Susan pauses with her hand on the door, staring at the doorknob instead of turning to look at Ray behind her. 

She shakes her head. “I’m too tired for sex.”

“I mean, we don’t have to have sex,” Ray says like that’s an obvious statement. “We could just, maybe, take a bath or something. De-stress. You seem like you need it.”

As oblivious as Ray is to so many things around him, he’s gotten good at reading her and always puts that skill to good use. It worries her.

“Okay,” Susan says. “Yeah.”

Neither of them talk on the way to her apartment. Neither of them talk while Ray draws the bath. Neither of them talk until they’re sitting in the bath and Ray is popping bubbles with his finger. It’s a comfortable sort of exhausted silence.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Ray asks.

Susan opens her eyes. She’s slouched in the tub with her head against the rim, her feet beside Ray’s hip. He’s got his arms resting on the rim of the tub like a football player taking an ice bath. 

He must know how stressed she is over Ollerman, like everyone else. The stress of Standish has faded some now that they know he’ll be okay but it lingers just a bit. What really has her on edge is the sheer and overwhelming relief she has that Ray is alright. He’s alright and sitting in the bath with her, trying to pick up bubbles without popping them. The memory of watching him collapse in Prague sits heavily on her chest as remembered panic and the sound of her begging him to be alright echoes in her head. She doesn’t know how to say all of this to herself, nevermind to Ray. 

“Will and Frankie slept together,” she blurts instead. As soon as it’s out of her mouth she curses herself inwardly for her inability to keep anything to herself.

“What?!” Ray squawks, accidentally splashing some water onto the floor as he sits upright. Susan nods. “How many times?!”

“Ray,” she sighs in chastisement. 

“Just asking. I mean, once is different than, like, a bunch, right? Was for us.”

“Three,” Susan sighs and Ray’s jaw drops. “At least.”

“But, like, three times, or three _times_ ,” he asks.

“Ray!” she scolds. He holds his hands up in a placating shrug. “At least three times,” she confesses. “I don’t know how many _times_.”

“So more than three,” Ray says sagely.

“Oh my god. Why did I even tell you.”

“Because you can’t keep a secret,” Ray says with a fond smile. “Except me. You kept me a secret. Still not really sure how I’m supposed to feel about that.”

She tips her head back against the tub again and groans.

“We don’t have to talk about it now,” he says, “but we do have to talk about it.”

“You should know about secrets,” she mutters before she can think better of it.

Hurt flickers across Ray’s face. “That’s my point.”

“Sorry,” she says, because he’s right. She usually avoids being petty like that. Ray relaxes against the tub again at her apology and sinks a little deeper into the water. “Did you hear any of their fight?” she asks after a long minute of silence interrupted only by the soft crackle of the popping bubbles.

“When?”

“Before Will stormed out tonight.”

“Oh. No, I just saw him leave. He looked pretty upset. Did Frankie break up with him?”

“Sort of. Basically. He spooked her, I think. And she spooked herself. I’m not sure which one more than the other.”

“Probably for the best,” he says.

“What? Why? They could be so good together,” Susan says.

Ray frowns. “Will falls in love too easily. We’ve both always had that in common. Frankie’s dangerous. She’s unpredictable and cold and I don’t really trust her with Will.” Susan looks at him in surprise. “I mean, I, you know, trust her with his life, yeah, but not with how sensitive he is. She’ll hurt him.”

“She-- wow,” Susan says. “I didn’t realize you had such an issue with her.”

“I don’t. She’s a great field agent, you know, she’s an asset to the team. But to be Will’s girlfriend? She’ll break his heart.”

Susan thinks it over. “I think she’s trying to protect him,” she says. Ray looks skeptically at her. “Really. You saw what happened in the airport.”

“I saw her blow the mission,” he says. 

“Because she was worried about Will!” Susan protests. “And if you’re assigning blame, blame both of them. Just because you’d expect it from Will and not from Frankie doesn’t mean she bears any more of the responsibility than he does.”

“You’re right,” Ray agrees. “I just don’t think she appreciates Will enough.”

Susan smiles at that. “I’m glad you’re looking out for him.”

Ray shrugs. “He’s still my friend even if I don’t deserve to be his.” Susan yawns and Ray pulls the stopper to drain the tub. “We need to actually sleep.”

“Yeah,” Susan agrees.

Ray stands and pulls the curtain back into the tub before tugging it closed and turning the shower on so they can rinse off the soap. Susan lets him pull her to her feet. She leans against his chest and wraps her arms around him in a loose hug. He runs a hand over her wet hair, tracing it down her back. They stay under the water until the tub drains.


	22. Chapter 22

Jai fiddles with the coffeemaker before the team arrives for the debrief. He’s too stressed to sit idly, not after what he walked in to find dredged up by the programs he left running overnight. He knows Frankie and Will bear some of the blame for Lannister’s escape, but he also can’t shake the feeling that if it were Standish hacking the traffic grid last night instead of him that he would’ve been able to slow them more effectively before they reached the airport. The combination of the stresses is making him restless.

Will’s the first to arrive. He’s brought coffee again, just like he’d said he would in the group chat. He’d even checked with Jai to see if the coffee machine was up and running before he volunteered to stop at the café around the corner from The Dead Drop.

“Good morning,” he says. It doesn’t sound as cheerful as it usually does. He doesn’t look as cheerful as he usually does. 

“Good morning,” Jai says. Will takes Jai’s coffee out of the tray and sets it on the bar for him. “Thank you,” Jai says. He knows without tasting it that it’s his habitual americano. “I … appreciate it. I’ll have this-- this _thing_ running soon. I don’t know what’s wrong with it. Maybe it’s defective,” he muses, looking at the half-dismantled machine.

“Or maybe you’ve barely slept since last week,” Will says gently.

Jai looks at him. “No. It’s probably defective.” Jai takes a long sip of his drink. “I read the directions in English, Mandarin, and Portuguese. None of them made very much sense.”

“I appreciate how you look out for Frankie,” Will says suddenly but with a tone of voice that suggests to Jai it wasn’t supposed to be sudden at all.

“Of course I do,” Jai says stiffly. “I love her. I thought you knew that.”

“I do, yeah,” Will says. “I’ve known that since I met both of you. I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate it.”

“You don’t need to,” Jai says warily.

“I just mean that you’re both my friends and I admire your friendship to each other.”

“Okay,” Jai says slowly, not knowing where this is going. 

“I-- okay, I’m using this to preface my next point, because I think it’s important that I say that first,” Will explains. Jai raises his eyebrows. “I think what you told Frankie was wrong. N--not… not that you were wrong to say it to her, because you’re just doing what you think is best for her, and like I said, I appreciate that; that’s why I wanted to say that first, but I think it’s incorrect.”

“What exactly did she say I said?” Jai asks cautiously.

“She didn’t say you said anything. But I know her. After the two of you were arguing yesterday-- and she didn’t tell me what that was about, for the record-- but I went outside to check on her, which I’m sure you know,” Will says. Jai nods. “She started an argument with me and, well, what she said sounded a lot more like you than her.”

“And?” Jai says bluntly.

“And I think you’re wrong. Frankie and I are more than capable of keeping our personal lives out of our work. Us being together wouldn’t hurt the team.”

Jai doesn’t know how to approach this without potentially ruining whatever fledgling friendship he has with Will. He doesn’t know why he cares. He knows that would upset the team’s structure too, though. He steeples his fingers and tips them toward Will. “There isn’t a nice way to say this. Did you see the video from the airport?”

Something flickers over Will’s face. Concern, maybe. “No,” he says.

“Then you need to.”

Jai pulls up the video and plays it for him. When Frankie tackles Brimmer, Will looks hurt, like a dog that doesn’t understand why it’s being scolded. When she turns to Will in the footage, hidden by the pillar from the angle of the camera, his face goes mostly blank. He watches Brimmer choke Frankie out without comment. Jai pauses the video and Will doesn’t look away from the frozen frame of Frankie pushing the door open to follow him onto the tarmac.

“Okay,” he says. “We’d need to work on that.”

“Will,” Jai says as gently as he can manage. Will looks up at him with those big, sad eyes and Jai thinks Will might already know what he’s about to say. “I’m not Susan… but I don’t think that’s something you-- you can work on. That’s Frankie reacting on instinct, because she cares about you. I don’t know if she’s in love with you,” Will’s brow furrows further, “but she does love you. Except she can’t. She loves too fiercely. There is no room for distraction in this job.”

“She can learn to focus,” Will says. “We both can.”

“No,” Jai says curtly. “You’re going to get her killed.”

Will flinches physically at that and Jai is genuinely surprised. Will may be sensitive, but he’s also been a spy for a long time. Before that he was a soldier. He’s got tough skin. Not tough enough to withstand even the thought of losing Frankie, though, apparently. If anything, it’s a comfort to Jai because he knows Will really does feel everything for Frankie that he’d need to in order to win her over. Not that he should be trying to win her over at all, which is Jai’s entire point. He wishes it were possible, though. 

Jai’s spared by Susan and Ray outside the door. 

“I’m trying to protect her,” Jai says quickly. “You, too.”

“Coffee, immediately,” Susan announces as she passes the door to Ray behind her.

“Your wish is my command,” Will says with a smile as he holds her cup out to her, as if the conversation Jai just had with him hadn’t happened at all.

Frankie silently enters the bar. Will holds her cup out as she passes. She plucks it from his hand and sits on the other side of Susan. 

“You’re welcome,” Will says. There’s mischief in his eyes and Jai knows it’s because it’s before seven a.m. and he’s deliberately provoking her at the risk of his own violent demise. Jai wonders if Will really even considered anything they just discussed.

Frankie flips Will off half-heartedly and takes a sip of her coffee with her other hand. She looks at the markings on the side and lowers her finger. “It’s like you read my mind,” she says. Jai reads the cup and sees that Will got her regular order with an extra shot this morning.

“You’re welcome,” Will says, half cheerful, half sarcastic, a blend that honestly sort of baffles Jai in how contradictorily genuine it is.

“Thanks,” Frankie grunts. She doesn’t look any better this morning than she has all week, despite having had more time to rest last night than she's had since Prague. Jai decides it’s not surprising given that she’s been drugged and choked into unconsciousness these past few days along with bearing the stresses the rest of them have as well.

“Hey,” Ray says excitedly, looking at his phone, “Farah just texted me; we can see Standish this morning!” Even Frankie lights up at that and everyone leans forward like they can get closer to Standish just by getting closer to Ray as he bears the news. 

“When?” Susan asks. 

“At ten. Just for a little while today, she said.”

When the excitement dies into silence, Jai puts his palms flat on the bar. He can feel Frankie’s eyes on him and he knows she’s read him already. “I have something that needs to start the debrief,” he says slowly. 

Everyone freezes. The cheer that had started to grow with Ray’s announcement crumbles. Even Jai can feel it. 

“When I got here this morning, the programs I left running the airport security footage had finished.” It seems like no one breathes. “They-- they got a hit on Ollerman.”

Jai plays the footage of the hangar Lannister’s plane had been sitting in eight hours prior to when Frankie and Will had actually encountered Lannister in the airport itself. There’s no mistaking Ollerman on the feed as he boards the plane hours before it was moved onto the tarmac. He pauses and waves at the camera, undoubtedly just for them.

“Oh my god,” Susan says as they watch. Frankie pushes her hair back with both hands. Will’s hands are fisted in his jeans. Ray looks like he might be sick.

Jai pauses the video when the door closes behind Ollerman. “There’s no record of the plane ever landing.”

“Probably too much to hope he crashed in the ocean, right?” Frankie mutters.

“So we don't know where he went,” Will says.

“No,” Jai confirms. “He’s just… gone.”

“He’ll turn up,” Susan says.

“And we’ll find him when he does,” Ray says stiffly.

There’s a thick sort of uncomfortable silence as everyone grapples with the news. Jai sets his tablet back on the bar top and waits for someone to decide what the hell they’re supposed to do with the rest of this debrief.

**

There’s a chorus of “hey!” as Standish’s team walks into the room. He smiles so wide he feels like he maybe looks like a dipshit, but he also doesn’t really care. 

“I’m going to go home and take a shower,” his mom says, squeezing his hand.

“Okay,” he says with a smile. Sometimes she’s a lot, overbearing and controlling, but she’s been his rock these past few days as he came slowly out of the drug induced haze he was in and began grappling with the reality of what happened. He doesn’t much want to talk to his team about that, though, so he keeps his smile pasted to his face. It’s not very hard.

Farah slips out of the room and his team piles in, Susan in the chair closest to him, Ray in the chair next to her, and Will and Frankie on the edge of his bed. Jai hovers awkwardly behind the chairs.

“Hi guys,” he says cheerfully. He’s so happy to see them. “Woah,” he blurts when he looks at Frankie, “what happened to your face? You’re still, like, scary hot, but ow.”

For a split second she looks mad but then she’s laughing and so is everyone else. 

He smiles too but doesn’t laugh. It hurts too badly and he’s too drugged anyway to have the energy required. 

“So,” Jai says, surprising everyone, “how are you feeling?” 

“Like I had a knife stabbed into my chest, but better now that you’re all here.” As far as jokes go, it’s obviously a little too on the nose but he receives weak smiles from them anyway. “What did I miss?” He thinks for a second. “I feel like Thomas Jefferson in _Hamilton_. ‘What did I miss?’” he sings, mostly off-key. He blinks at his team’s silence. “What did I miss?” he repeats normally. 

They all laugh and only laugh harder at his befuddled expression. “What are they giving you?” Frankie asks. “I think I need some for my face.” She’s smiling mostly with her eyes, but the grin is there in the side of her mouth that isn’t black and blue. 

Standish nods. “That looks like it hurt like an absolute bitch,” he says very seriously.

They all laugh and Standish smiles a little wider at the sound of his family’s happiness. He wishes his mom could get to know them too but knows that wouldn’t be a very good idea. Having any idea of what they did would only worry her.

“So,” Jai says, leaning his elbows on the back of Susan’s chair and steepling his fingers. “Something very important happened while you were unconscious,” Jai says.

“Oh god,” Standish says

Jai pauses a moment more. “We all learned that your mom calls you Eddie.”

“Oh, funny, funny,” Standish says. They all laugh. “None of you are ever allowed to call me Eddie. Ever.” They only laugh harder, punch drunk. “What else did I miss?” They all seem to consider. An intangible weight seems to gather like a burgeoning storm, silencing them, growing by the moment until Will interrupts.

“Frankie’s been feeding a stray cat in the alley behind the bar.”

Frankie looks at him in disbelief. “Will!”

Will nods at Standish. “Named it and everything!”

“I don’t _feed her_!” Frankie protests. 

“Frankie has a pet?” Standish says in disbelief. “How the fuck long was I asleep?!”

They laugh riotously at that, even Frankie. “She’s not a pet,” Frankie insists through her laughter. Will’s laughing so hard that he’s wiping away tears. The team keeps laughing and Frankie rolls her eyes but there’s none of the usual threat in her expression that Standish would expect when the team is making fun of her. 

Susan shushes them. “You guys, we’re going to get thrown out!” That quells the hysteria a bit and they all sit quietly for a moment. He can’t help the feeling that they’re keeping something from him.

“Did you find Ollerman?” he asks.

They all look at him for a long moment before Will answers. “No. Not yet.” Standish nods. “But we will,” Will insists.

“Yeah,” Standish says with another nod. “I know we will.”

There’s another awkward silence. 

“I had your mom ask the nurses what you’re allowed to have,” Susan says, pulling a bottle out of the bag he hadn’t even noticed her walk in with. She turns it so it’s facing him. “Apple juice,” she says with a smile.

“Yay,” he says sarcastically, but the gesture makes him feel warm inside as she passes the cups around. “Can I make the toast?” Standish asks.

Everyone stares at him for a moment like he’s surprised them and he looks around between them all before starting to lower his cup.

“Sure,” Will says with a smile.

Standish raises his juice again. “All things considered? We good.”

Everyone smiles. 

“We are good,” Jai agrees.

“Cheers,” Will says.

“I can drink to that,” Frankie says.

“Yeah same,” Ray agrees.

“Salud,” Susan says, as always.

They all sip their juice. 

“How was that?” Standish asks Will.

Will tilts his head and pulls a face like he’s thinking about it. “All things considered?” he says with a smile. “Pretty good for a first toast.”

Standish grins.

**

Ollerman pours the scotch very slowly from the decanter into the glasses. In moments like this, presentation is everything. 

He hands off the other glass and settles casually into his chair, taking a sip as he rests his ankle on his opposite knee. "I went through a lot of trouble to get you out of prison," he says finally.

"I know. And not that I'm not happy about that, but I'm wondering why."

"Because a business proposition is hardly best delivered with bars between us."

His guest sips the scotch. "Business. Now that's something we have in common."

Ollerman smiles. "We have a lot more in common than just business, and I'm not just interested in hiring you for your connections and business acumen."

"I'm listening." 

Ollerman takes a long swallow of the scotch and plays the pause. "I have an issue. A problem that's affecting my business. And while I could just eliminate the problem, well--"

"Where's the fun in that?" his guest asks with a smile. 

"Exactly."

"What exactly is it what you want me to take care of for you?"

"Will Chase," Ollerman says flatly. "I want his partner dead, and I want Chase to suffer through every second of it before you kill him too. Deal with that for me and then we'll sort out your role in the business."

"I don't work for free."

"I don't expect you to. But I expect you to be successful. I want them dead." 

Jimmy Coleman smiles. "Then we want the same thing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's all folks. I hope you enjoyed this Thing that started as a multichapter fic and turned into a legitimate _novel_. It definitely took me on a ride and I hope it did for you as well. I went into this with some goals and with the knowledge that I was definitely going to end up with a result that is different from the show (of course-- I'm not limited by a constrictive time frame) but I hope its spirit felt true to the source material and that it satisfied everyone's desire even just a little for the season we never got to have. 
> 
> I have so much more in store. I'm sure as hell not done here.


End file.
